


wild mint blossoms

by selkiegirl



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fae & Fairies, Fae! Yuuri, Human! Viktor, M/M, Slightly more angst than originally intended, slight overuse of motifs in a good way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-01-23 05:18:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12499640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selkiegirl/pseuds/selkiegirl
Summary: In the land of the fae, Viktor falls in love the same way that he loses himself: with Yuuri at his side and with the lingering scent of mint surrounding them both like a whisper.





	1. rhosyn gwyllt

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story idea that I have been playing around with for quite a while, and one that I am very excited to finally be posting. I have wanted to write a fae au for a long long time, but I only got the idea for what this would become after walking through a friend's garden, where they had wild growing mint, and noticing how much the scent clung to my fingers after I touched it, and how much it lingered on the other plants. 
> 
> There are a couple Welsh words and phrases throughout the story - however I do not speak the language, so don't hesitate to point out any mistakes- and they will be translated within the end chapter notes, starting in the second chapter!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and if you enjoy the story, please leave kudos or comments, and subscribe! 
> 
> <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He thinks, that if he were to swallow a star, this is what it would feel like, oh so painfully hot, and as if he is falling through shards of burnt glass and paper and blood, watching something he should have known to stop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a story idea that I have been playing around with for a while, and one that I am very excited to finally be posting! I have wanted to write a fae au for a long time, but the idea for this only really formed from walking through a friend's garden, where they had wild growing mint, and noticing how much the scent clung to my fingerstips after I touched it, and how much it lingered on the other plants nearby. 
> 
> There are several Welsh words used throughout the chapters, which will be defined in the end notes, starting with the second chapter. I do not speak Welsh, however, so please don't hesitate to correct any errors you might notice!!
> 
> If you want to hang out, you can find me on [tumblr](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com). I am pretty much entirely and yuri on ice and aesthetic blog. 
> 
> As always, if you liked the story, please leave kudos or a comment, and subscribe! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! 
> 
> <3

**Part One: Rhosyn gwyllt**

Yuuri meets Viktor for the first time in a pub.

He had been sober enough to cast a human glamor, hiding his pointed ears and damp hair, masking the tell-tale scent of mint behind something else, something vague and _human_ , but he had been drunk enough to think it was a good idea.

There was a dull, constant ache in his ankle causing him to wince slightly with each wobbly step he took, the glamor settling itchy on his skin, and all Yuuri wanted to do was to be able to not think.

He had lifted up his glass, the slow burn of the alcohol sliding down his throat, when he caught the gaze of the silver haired man with icy glacier blue eyes from across the room.

Yuuri smiled, teeth showing and made for war. ‘ _Make me forget my grief_ ,’ he didn’t say, the dare instead written across his face, and the strange, beautiful man somehow obliged.

“I’m Viktor,” the man said as introduction, when he had woven his way through the sea of people, stretching out his hand to draw them both into a quiet, hidden corner, away from the press of bodies and the swirls of dust.

“Yuuri,” he murmured into Victor’s ear in response, his breath warm, and his body too close, too personal, too intimate for a stranger. But a shiver had run through Viktor’s body nonetheless, and Yuuri smiled like a cat with a bird in between its claws who knew he had won.

They both had been wearing their loneliness like coats, wrapped tightly around them until they could pretend that the cold had not settled into the hollows of their bones. But then, in the human pub, with the pain in his ankle and a lie painted onto his features, Yuuri had been a little too raw to pretend, and in that moment, he had not wanted too.

* * *

  
It hadn’t taken them long to end up in Viktor’s room.

Viktor crashed his lips to Yuuri’s, barely past the moment they had stumbled into the dimly lit room, their bodies in tangent and the roughly hewn floorboards creaking underneath their steps like the wind that brought out the Will-o’-the-wisps in the autumn marshes found near Yuuri’s home, drawing unwary travelers across the border.

The flare of mint had followed instinctively, rising into the air like the tiny, pale blossoms that grew in the springtime, and all Yuuri could think was: _stupid, stupid, stupid._

But Viktor didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he pulled Yuuri even impossibly closer, sighing, his hands burning as he slipped them underneath Yuuri’s tunic and on his chest, as he pulled their bodies together into their own private dance.

* * *

  
“Let me help you with your next journey!” Yuuri had said, his legs thrown around Viktor’s waist, his body in his lap, and his face buried in the other man’s neck. His words were slightly obscured and muffled, _‘I admired you,’_ he didn’t say.

“You know who I am?” Viktor asked, moments later, his voice somehow both low and breathy, and a pitch higher than usual.  His thoughts slower with the pressed warmth of Yuuri’s body against his.

“Yes! I want to come with you.” Yuuri had grinned like he held all the secrets to the world in his outstretched palms and he was willing to share them with Viktor, and maybe, if only in their own small private world, Viktor had allowed himself to believed him,  “I can help you, I know a lot about the Fae.”

The phrase had rung in Viktor’s ears like the morning church bells that brought the world back into sense with the sunrise, but Yuuri had kissed his ear, his mouth hot, hot, _hot_ on his skin, and suddenly Viktor couldn't think anymore.

* * *

   
“Are you sober enough to decide?” Viktor asked sometime later, pulling back, hesitation clouding his face.

“Yes,” Yuuri hissed, his body singing and impatient, touch-starved and hungry.

It wasn’t a lie, human alcohol was different for him, and right now Yuuri didn’t want to think about the dull throb of his ankle when he stood, or the fact that he might never be part of the Court again, never be able to wear the gold earrings or the bangles that danced on his wrists when he moved.

He only wanted to _feel_ again.

“Alright.”

* * *

  
Yuuri left in the morning, sneaking out when the rising sun turned the world into manageable shades of pinks and orange, his body aching, his lips chapped, and his emotions frayed and worn, stretched thin by worry and such raw _wanting_ of what he could not have. 

In the late hours of the night, Viktor had rolled over to face him, his pale face and mussed hair jammed into Yuuri’s shoulder, and when Yuuri had woken, he had not wanted to leave.

Sometime last night, he had remembered what it was like to dance for fun, for his own enjoyment and whim, his blood singing and in the arms of a human, Yuuri had felt so alive.

It was painfully ironic in all of the worst ways, and Yuuri didn’t want to think about what it meant.

It hurt when he stood to gather his shucked off tunic and pants, but less for the ache that had settled into his bones, like a shadow of a weight, but more for the vast, vast longing that gnawed at his thoughts.

Yuuri had been drunk, but he hadn’t been drunk enough to forget, and maybe in some ways, that was almost the heavier burden to carry.

* * *

  
Viktor woke to the lingering scent of mint in the empty sheets and his heart in his hands.

He hadn’t expected Yuuri to stay, but he had _hoped_ , and somehow, that was even lonelier.

He had stumbled to the baths, and when he stood, his hair pressed wet and cold against his face, he had brought his hand to his mouth and tasted nothing but bitterness.

Viktor forgot how to breath, in that single moment, with the taste heavy and suffocating on his tongue, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be able to again when it had passed.

* * *

  
Yuuri wore gold in his ears, two small, round piercing, one in each earlobe, and maybe Viktor should have thought of that when he had places kisses as delicate as butterflies there. Maybe he should have noticed the faded leather bracelet, worn soft with sweat and tears, on Yuuri’s wrist, inscribed with symbols that were unreadable only to him.

The scent of mint hung in the air like a betrayal, clinging to Viktor like a second lover after Yuuri.

_‘I know a lot about the fae!’_ Yuuri had said, grinning like it was a victory while placing each word like a gift on Viktor’s skin.

Of course he did, he _was_ one.

Viktor had been drunk enough to not notice the sharp, almost cloying smell when he had kissed Yuuri, blossoming into the air like a moan.

But, Viktor hadn’t been drunk enough to forget Yuuri’s name.

It didn’t hurt, but god, it _ached._

* * *

  
Once upon an age, there was a clever human who fell in love with a beautiful Fae woman. He chased her for months, and years, and days, before she finally fell in love with him back. They were happy. But one day, the fae woman cast the the man aside, leaving him behind with his broken heart, and she was  never seen in the human realm again.

The humans use it as a reason not to fall in love with the Fae. They tell it to their children as bedtime fables, as myths and warnings. ‘ _Don't be stupid_ ,’ they say in hushed voices over candle light, ‘ _stay away from the fae, you’ll only get hurt_.’

They ask Viktor if he knows the story days later, when his chapped lips had faded.

Viktor smiles like it is made of knives, swirls his whiskey, and _lies._

* * *

  
Its mostly by accident that Viktor finds Yuuri again.

The Yu-topia Katsuki inn was well known on both sides of the border, even if it is hidden several leagues into the ancient fae forest of looming trees that separated the two kingdoms, with customers both the human and the fae. It was an unspoken truce spot between the eddying and rising tensions of the people, and Viktor didn't want to wonder how much longer if would be open for people of both sides of the border, and which side they would choose if the war finally came.

Viktor rents a room for eight days, an older woman wearing a cape of black feathers and surrounded by a multitude of crows standing impatiently behind him as he fumbles for the correct words in the unfamiliar language. The fae woman who helps him looks tired and frustrated, an ashy scent lingering around her body, and her ombre hair occasionally falling in front of her deep earthy brown eyes. She pushes her hair back, and when she does, Vikor catches a glimpse of several silvery piercings, lined neatly up the side of her slightly pointed ears.

Viktor had barely taken the brass key from the woman’s hand and stepped aside, his pack heavy on his shoulders, when the crow woman slams something on the table in front of the other woman, seething loudly in a deep squawking voice that sets Viktor’s teeth on edge.

The woman with the faded brown hair hisses something back, equally loud, in the same rough river hewn tongue.

It's only out of the corner of the eye, when he turns to leave to find his room, does he see a flash of dark, dark hair and a worn leather bracelet around the corner.

More than anything, Viktor recognizes Yuuri from his wrapped bracelet and the soft scent of mint that follows him like an echo.

* * *

  
Viktor finds Yuuri on the fourth day with a woven basket of linens tucked underneath his arm, and his hair tucked behind his ears.

“Can we talk?” He asks, his voice hesitant and quiet compared to the bustle of the busy hallway that eddies around them, and Yuuri doesn’t understand, when Viktor looks at him with the quiet pained smile, why he had been avoiding him for the past weeks. And when Viktor casts his eyes away, as if he is afraid of Yuuri’s respond, Yuuri doesn't have the heart to say no.

* * *

  
They end up at the ocean.

Yuuri’s feet had followed the well worn path unconsciously, leading Viktor to the sandy bluff overlooking the sea that stretched out infinitely, blue grey and cold, in the distance.

“You knew who I was?” Viktor murmurs without looking at Yuuri, and his low voices seeming so empty, so lost, and even as Yuuri sits next to him, Viktor feels a thousand leagues away.

“Everyone knows who you are on this side of the border.” Yuuri says in response, his voice quiet against the constant pounding of the waves on the sand. It's a cowardly answer, because it's not true, and because there was so much more than that.

“Who am I then?” Viktor hisses, his words so unexpectedly bitter, so painfully sad, as if they bled iron onto his tongue, and somehow, Yuuri isn’t sure how this can be the same man who had lit up like a spark when Yuuri had asked to help him with his next quest.

" _Ceisiwr_ ," Yuuri says, and he hates himself for it, because just like his first answer, it feels craven and as false as fool's gold.

“ _Ceisiwr_?” Viktor repeats back in question, the tension leaching away from his throat with curiosity, the word unfamiliar on his tongue and sharpening the ‘r’ like a knife on a block. “What's that mean?"

"Seeker," Yuuri says simply, and it's not a lie.  
  
"There's more to it than that isn't there? They say _‘ceisiwr_ ..." He trailed off, stumbling on the foreign words.  
  
" _Ceiswyr o bethau anghofiedig_ ,” Yuuri finishes for him. “Seeker of forgotten things." He swallows the other names the come to mind, other words that are fashioned like swords with fire and with hate, each too sharp, and each too raw for them to be anything other than cruel. 

“They don't say it like you do. It's colder when they say it.”

There isn’t really an answer for that and as Yuuri stares at the unending waves, he can’t help but feel the emptiness that tries to swallow him, the unnameable sadness of sudden loss unexpectedly welling up, and with Viktor at his side, he can only muse of what might have been his if he had not been afraid.

* * *

  
Viktor had already made up his mind when he finds Yuuri.

It was later, sometime in the evening when the wispy clouds had hidden one of the moons, and when the quiet had become its own living being. He found Yuuri bent like paper over something held in his hands, his legs tucked underneath him.

For a moment Viktor can't help but entertain the idea as if he was greeting Yuuri like someone he knew, like an old lover instead of the puzzling, quiet stanger. 

“Yuuri” he breaths out like a sigh, still half caught in his mind, and the dark haired man drops the small item that he was holding in his hands, the tinkling sound of breaking glass following, and then a hiss of pain.

Yuuri looks up with his finger cupped in his other palm, cut and with single bright red drop of blood sliding down his thumb.

“ _He bleeds red_ ,’ Viktor can only think, and his mind stuck on the single fact giving birth to a stupidly, foolish seed of hope. ‘ _He bleeds red,_ he thinks, and he doesn’t notice how odd that was.  _  
_

“I though the fae were supposed to be unscareable,” Viktor muses instead, pushing it down to speak, mirth like a lie colouring his tone light.

And when Yuuri smiles, small, unassuming and private, speaking softly, and Viktor can feel the same seed of hope blooming like a sunflower, large and stifling in his throat until he feels like he can’t breath, “Alas not. What did you need?”

“I need to ask you something,” He pauses, glances away, and _hopes_.

“Alright,” Yuuri whispers, uncertainty and hesitation played across his features, their own personal truce still fragile and glass thin between them.

Viktor twists his mouth, skirting his gaze around the empty common room, of the low tables with flowers blooming in glass vases on each one, and with the unmistakable air of courage and wishing, says, “Not here. Can I ask you in my room?”

Yuuri had looked at him, his dark eyes unreadable, and Viktor couldn’t help but think about how his request had sounded, but Yuuri had stood, brushing the last of the tiny glass shards away with the faintest smell of mint, and Viktor could only be grateful for the small victory of that single moment.

* * *

  
Three days after Yuuri had left Viktor with nothing more than the rumpled, empty sheets and the bitter smell of mint, and two weeks before he had found him again at the inn, Viktor had gone to Yakov.

“I think I’m dying,” Viktor had said simply, because what else was there to say, and because he had never been one for subtlety.

Maybe it had been something in his tone, but the King’s adviser had looked up at him with his gray hair framing his face and heavily lidded eyes, surrounded by stone walls and gold gilded books and maps, silk tapestries and flags hanging off the walls. “Why?”

“Orphia,” Viktor had said, quietly, miserably, and Yakov had understood. 

* * *

  
He had fallen in love with her for her kindness and her untamable will, for the salty scent of the ocean that followed her like a memory, and he had hated her for her cruelty.

“Orphia,” Viktor had whispered, and she had come, her long long hair trailing out behind her and her name sounding like the wind, the spring flowers that she wore in her hair, and tragedy. 

“Orphia, Orphia, Orphia,” Viktor had murmured, when she was wrapped next to him, her hair in his hands, and the lingering traces of saltwater cascading around them, the slow growing fear of the revelation gripping his heart in its icy hands.

“Orphia,” Viktor had hissed in pain, the name sounding like twisted, gnarled vines and betrayal, when she had stood above him, her pale hand painfully cold cold _cold_ on his chest and her face made up of shards of stone.

She was a being of the sea, something that both gave life and stole it as easily as a breath, born from the mist that came from the waves that clashed against the jagged rocks, and it was only fitting that she had imparted the sea onto Viktor, taking and taking and taking.

She had cursed him for falling out of love for with her, wanting him to stay and give what he could no longer.

* * *

  
“You will forget everything you cared about, everyone you loved and then yourself, just like you forgot me.”  She had hissed, her words hanging like the early summer frost that grew on the flower buds that bloomed too early, and Viktor had believed her.

* * *

  
Milla finds him later, where he had been sitting on the edge of the castle roof, the late afternoon sun falling down on them like gold and making her scarlet hair look like the fire that was so fitting for her personality.

“You’re quitting?” she inquired, more curious than malicious, as she sits down next to him, bringing with her the scent of summer and sweat.

“Retiring, more like,” Viktor murmurs, looking up to the infinite blue of the sky that was stretched out in front of them, and wanting to say “ _get out while can, from this life that takes an entire soul and more.”_

“Why?”

Viktor doesn’t have an answer for the question that can be encapsulated in a single word or phrase or sentence, or even pages and books. The truth was too complicated, too intertwined, too painful.

Milla doesn’t push him, only bumping her muscular shoulder against his, leaning her head back and staring up at the way the sun was setting against the backdrop of the kingdom, and in the distance, the fae border was visible. But when she does talk, her normally booming voice subdued and gentle, “You’ve met someone?”

“He left,” Viktor says, because Milla always seems to know things that she should not know, because he can answer that, wanting someone else to hear the aching mess of pain that he was holding within himself.

“Why?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Viktor snapped.

“Maybe he was scared,” Milla murmured, lifting her feet out in front of her so she can kick off her sandals, before dropping her bare tan feet back down to hang against the stone wall, high above the rest of their daily lives.

“Why would he be scared?” Viktor asks, lashing out, his burden of pain making him cruel.

“I dunno, different people are scared of different things, Viktor. Maybe what seemed so small to you, was something he couldn’t do.”

* * *

  
Viktor meets the boy who will replace him, the boy the Milla will spend her life guarding, at dinner. He’s young, his golden hair long enough to look like that of a page’s, and his temperament reminiscent of a wild caged dog, sitting cockily in the designated chair to the left of the King’s son. Milla stands behind him, her hand poised on the hilt of her sword.

He snarls at Viktor, his green eyes looking like poisoned jewels, and Viktor can only think about how perfect he is for the job.

* * *

  
Viktor had found things.

It was simple, really. The old king, with his hard slate eyes and straight back, would ask. And then Viktor would find it, seeking out things that didn’t belong in the world of the human kingdom, uncovering secret after secret after secret.

Sometimes it was easier than others. Sometimes it would be a pen made from a griffin feather that changed colours when it wrote, other times a sword that made it impossible to lose a battle, sometimes a ring that enchanted the wearer to always be breathtakingly beautiful when they wore it.

Sometimes it was harder. Sometimes the King asked him to find the fae who granted wishes, to bring them back, and Viktor knew that the creature would spend the rest of its life in the golden room without doors that was still a gilded cage next to the King’s throne. Sometimes he had asked for things that had already belonged to people and families for generations. And sometimes, when he came back to the king with his head hung low, his sword was stained with the slippery coppery coloured blood that could only belong to those with sharp teeth and pointed ears.

* * *

  
The boy, Yuri, finds him that evening, kicking his back with single minded determination, like a wild creature fighting to keep its place in the food chain surrounded by predators and Viktor had empathy for him.

“Why’d you quit?” he asks, when he had finally paused, and Vikor had looked him in the face.

Like when Milla had asked him, on top of the castle with the world spread out underneath them, Viktor hadn’t known how to answer the guard. But now, in the face of the boy who seems much too young to be handed the mantle of the lifetime quest, Viktor can say what he had been afraid to before, “I was tired.” And when he smiles, his voice curving into what he knows is cruel, Viktor asks, “What about you?”

Yuri looks at him, his eyes flashing, sharp and alert. “They won’t let me start until I turn sixteen.”

‘ _How young he is_ ,’ Viktor thinks as he watches, and something shifts in him then, some intrinsic part of him that had made him so good at his job latching onto the way that the boy had hesitated, indicating at something that he might have missed otherwise. “What are you doing now then? Why are you at court?”

It’s when Yuri’s face darkens, hiding something, that Viktor knew he had found something important.

“I’m going to the Fae court.” Yuri had muttered, anger still lining his words in ash.

“Why?”

“For the queen’s favor,” Yuri had snarled, his face guarded with what might have been embarassment if Viktor knew him better.

“Why? What can she offer you that our king cannot?” he asks out loud again, cocky yet uneasy, and then realises the answer. ‘ _A wish,_ ’ Viktor thinks, and then, ‘ _a cure_ ,’ and then ‘ _Yuuri_.’

But maybe because he’s selfish, or maybe because he had nothing left to give, Viktor doesn’t look back as he leaves the golden haired boy with the heavy burden of the life as the King’s seeker.

* * *

  
Orphia had left a imprint of fish on his chest, next to his heart and curled around itself until its tail touched its nose. It was a deep, shimmering blue that had reminded him of her eyes when she was angry.

“ _For each scale it gains, you will lose one memory_ ,” Orphia had promised. When Viktor had reined his courage to look, long after she had left, taking the smell of the sea with her and leaving Viktor cold and empty, void of feelings, he had found one single scale already adorning the body of the fish.

He did not know what he had lost, and his fear was so so soot like and bitter in his mouth.

* * *

  
The bath is warm on Viktor’s body as he sinks into the water, the rough stones of the pool and the trees creating a sense of privacy. In the middle of the bath was a fountain, gurgling slightly, and softly glowing yellow lanterns were placed next to the water, casting the water in shades of silver and gold.

He doesn’t want to look at the silvery blue fish located next to his heart. And he doesn’t want to think about how Yuuri had bitten his lip when he had shown the dark haired man, almost pity showing on his face, and reaching up, fingers as gentle as a butterfly to touch it.

There is a single scale on the body of the fish and Viktor doesn’t want to think about how he doesn’t know what it was from. Instead he slides further into the water, the slightly green tint of the rumored healing waters lapping at his chest until he can't see the imprint. He tips his head back and his silver hair cascades like a waterfall out next to him, spread out and floating next to his head.

He can’t remember his mother’s name.

The thought is as sudden and jarring and painful as bee sting. He can think of her frozen eyes and small, tight smile, how her face had lost colour, ashy when she had died, but he doesn't know her name.

On his chest, the fish grows another scale, blooming into existence with a sharp burst of red coloured pain.

Viktor doesn’t know how to breath, and instead he thinks ‘ _Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri_.’

His mother’s name comes back to him like the sweet sweet summer rain after a fire. _‘Irina_ ,’ he thinks, ‘ _my mother’s name was Irina._ ’ He thinks the name again and again, until it loses all meaning. He whispers it to the trees and traces the letters onto his bare legs with his fingertips. ‘ _My mother’s name was Irina.’_

When he gets out, he writes it down, the extra ink from his shaking hand falling like tears and staining the page.

When he looks at his chest, the fish only has a single scale, the second next to it only a blurred shape and Viktor can only count that as a victory, relief a heavy taste in his mouth.

* * *

  
Viktor had planned to stay for eight days, and on the evening of the seventh he finds Yuuri in the common room, his legs tucked underneath him like an echo of the past night, his hair damp and pushed back, and surrounded by the bustle of the inn.

Both fae and humans fill the tables in the room, and in a darkened corner, lit only by several candles, Viktor thinks he recognizes the woman with the crows and cape of feathers who had impatiently stood behind him in the line when he had rented the room, sitting by herself.

He knows what he needs to ask, but the thought still fills him with unease, so afraid of Yuuri saying no. So he sits next to him, folding his long legs underneath the low table, and when Yuuri looks at him from underneath inky coloured lashes, Viktor is overcome with so much _want_ for what is not his to have _,_ it physically aches.

“Yuuri...” he starts, and maybe like the time that had had told Yakov he was cursed, and something in his tone had made the older man look up, Yuuri peers up at him, his face quizzical and hesitant, the starting of a word on his lips.

“Yuuri,” he starts again, his voice clearer, and when he speaks, he thinks about how Yuuri had looked at him so trustingly and so sweet that night several weeks ago, and how he had talked to him on the beach, as an equal. He thinks about how Yuuri had given him back his mother’s name, and he knows what to ask. “Yuuri, please, I need your help to travel through the Fae kingdom so I can lift the curse. Please, I need you to come with me.”

* * *

  
Yuuri is unsure what to think when Viktor sits down next to him the evening before he is planned to leave. He thinks about the fish that is tattooed on his chest, dark and painful and as wrong as it is cruel, and when he looks at Viktor, with his lips pursed and unsure, Yuuri already knows something is imminent.

But when Viktor asks him to help him through the fae kingdom so that can ask the Queen to lift the curse, Yuuri is surprised.

It was as if the entire inn has gone quiet, even the hum of the background magic dulling, and when Yuuri glances up at the packed room at surrounds them, all eyes are already on him, each waiting to see what he would do.

Yuuri thinks about how it was so rare for a peaceful union between the fae and the humans, especially now, with both poised on the verge of war, and how it would be scorned by both kingdoms, and how accepting the offer could possibly get him banished from parts of the fae court.

He thinks about how his ankle had been steadily growing stronger once more, the smallest of things slowly fading away, and he thinks about the gold earrings and bangle bracelets that he misses with a passion he didn’t think he would, and how he could lose all that he had worked for if he said yes.

And he thinks about how Viktor had smiled that night, when they danced, their bodies learning the shape of the other’s, and how he had felt so so alive in the arms of the silver haired man. He thinks about how afraid Vikor had looked, when he had trusted him enough to show him the curse planted on his chest and how he had looked so _small_.

And with the entire inn watching him in silence, Yuuri, feeling like he’s flying on broken wings and exultation, says, "Alright."

* * *

  
The morning of the day of Viktor’s planned departure is rainy, the clouds low and bursting above the sky, and when Yuuri wakes, his mouth fuzzy and thoughts slow, he can only think, ‘ _Viktor is leaving today._ ’

It’s only when he stumbles out of his nest of blankets, his hair mussed, and nearly trips on the empty pack that lays next to his bed does Yuuri realise, ‘ _and I’m going with him._ ’

It was a strange realization, and one that Yuuri is not sure about as he counts his breaths, and as the drumming of the rain above replaces his heartbeat.

* * *

  
Yuuri meets Viktor later in the morning, his leather pack slung over one shoulder, and a deep kindled sense of both apprehension and untamable excitement for their journey buzzing in his mind. Minako greets them at a small table in a back room, a pocket of quiet in the constant hum of the inn with a set in her jaw and a rolled up map in her hand.

When she unrolls the map, the edges fraying and the paper yellowed with time and use, all three of them lean around the short table to peer at it in the dimly lit room, and Yuuri feels like his entire body is singing.

“Alright,” Minako says, her clear voice seeming loud in the quiet room, “there are about five weeks until the summer solstice and when you have to be a the the Court. There are two ways the reach the Court.” She reaches down to trace the map with her fingertip. “The first way is the direct path, cutting through the heart of Fae kingdom and starting from here.” She taps where the inn was marked on the map with a blue circle and the scrawled word that Yuuri think reads ‘home’ from upside down.

‘ _Five weeks’_ Yuuri thinks, ‘ _five weeks is manageable.’_

“So, should we go that way because it's shorter?” Viktor says, biting his lip and looking pensive, and maybe if Yuuri had looked a bit closer, concerned. Viktor peers at the map with something dark on his face, and Yuuri can only wonder what Viktor would have done for a map like this of the fae kingdom when he still served the king.

“Not necessarily.  Even though it is shorter, it is more dangerous as many of the fae with try to stop you and otherwise hinder your journey,” Minako states cautiously.

“Why?” Viktor demands, genuine curiosity in his tone.

“It's a game,” Yuuri answers quietly, “to stop those wishing for the Queen’s favor.” It’s a true answer, but there are layers and layers more, about how certain fae await this time of year with glee, not for the festivities at court, but for the human travelers that they will stop from arriving there. For the humans who foolishly meander through the kingdom as thought they would the human kingdom, thinking nothing about second shadow that follows their steps too closely, or birds that sing a song that is a little too familiar.

Viktor frowns but doesn’t say anything else and Minako starts speaking again. “The other way is slightly longer, as you would pass through a portion of the human kingdom and then trace back roads to reach the Court. Both routes would take you the Court with about a week, to a week and a half, give or take, working around the obstacles, before the solstice.”

Viktor taps his finger on his mouth, shifting thoughtfully from one foot to another. For the first time since he had rented a room at the inn, Yuuri could understand how he had been the King’s best seeker for over ten years.

“Alright,” Viktor says, his voice filling the room, “we will take the slightly longer way and pass through parts of the human realm...” He cuts off abruptly and turns to look at Yuuri, “Unless you have another opinion, that is?”

Yuuri glances at Minako and then back to the Viktor, before mutely shaking his head.

“Alright.” Viktor repeats and when Yuuri turns to look at him, there’s a small soft smile on his face. “It's settled then, we will travel that way to reach the Court.”

* * *

  
They click an iron bracelet onto Yuuri’s wrist at the border, when they check their papers to enter back into the human kingdom. And when he hisses, his mouth tastes like copper and his mind is fuzzy.

_“_ It's so you fucking _creatures_ don’t go on a rampage _,”_ the broad guard had sneered at him, and when he holds Yuuri’s wrist to put on the bracelet in tightly clenched grasp, Yuuri can only think about _fear._

* * *

   
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to fall in love with the fae? _”_ Minako had asked Viktor, the bottle of liquor placed on her lips, hours after he had asked Yuuri to help him.

“No,” Viktor had said. ‘ _Others did, but she never did_ ,’ he doesn’t say. It feels like a confession, like the burning honey whiskey sliding down his throat, that he had swallowed and swallowed after he had seen the imprint of the fish on his chest, and in the same way, it felt like soaring and victory, the words somehow painfully honest even if he didn’t understand why.

It was a good feeling.

* * *

  
The small human village at the start of their journey exactly like Viktor remembers, and nothing at the same time.

The sun is golden in the light blue sky above them. The church bells start tolling and when Viktor tries to count, he loses track, each doleful clamor sounding the previous and the next.

‘ _My mother’s name was Irina,_ ’ he thinks as he walks. He traces each letter into the palm of his own hand. ‘ _I will not forget. I will not forget. I will not forget._ ’

He looks at Yuuri, at the small chain of links clicking around his delicate wrist with each step. Viktor knows what iron does to the Fae, but when Yuuri pushes it back, Viktor is startled to find only a dull red flush where the metal had touched. He meets Yuuri’s gaze. It is dark and heavy, and there is a dare in his face, or perhaps a plea. Viktor can’t tell the difference anymore. 

In that singular moment and for the first time in years, Viktor hates himself for not having the courage to ask. Insead he looks ahead with each footfall on the cobblestones of the paved street and thinks ‘ _My mother was named Irina_.’

* * *

  
It's only when Viktor is talking to a vendor at a booth in the marketplace, his back to Yuuri, and a swell of people surrounding them, that he understands for the first time that this path had its own dangers.

It starts small, but people eddie around Yuuri like a current, leaving a small pocket of air on all sides of him, and Viktor hates himself for not thinking about what it meant to be fae in the human kingdom when he choose their journey.

A small child throws an insult at Yuuri like a stone, hidden from behind his mother’s long skirts. Yuuri only grips the strap on his satchel, his fingers almost white, and stares ahead. It's something simple, something about his dark _dark_ hair, and his slightly tipped ears, his vaguely ethereal presence that Viktor had been too drunk to notice the first time but grown to love. When Viktor hears the insult, his anger is strong enough to be red and his fear makes his thoughts fuzzy. He knows where this is going. He has seen this before.

It’s as if the child had given an invisible cue. Someone jives something that the border guard had said to Yuuri, about the bracelet that was clearly visible on his skin, the blooming redness apparent behind the metal, opposite from the wrapped leather strands on the other wrist. One bracelet so pretty on his body, the other one something that terrifies him.

Viktor can only think about how ironic it is, as he pulls up his hood and thin summer scarf to hide his face. He has seen the villagers taunt passing through fae for years, if not decades, and each time he had walked away without looking. But now, as he grabs Yuuri’s arm and pulls him away from the marketplace, forgetting his wares at the vendor’s stall, he can’t help but wonder what changed.

* * *

  
Their journey gives them six nights in the human kingdom before they will pass through the the border again, and into the ancient forest that will be their constant companion for the longest part of their path. But for the first night, when they are still new uncertain about their newly fledged relationship, they stay at Viktor’s friend, Chris’s, place.

Chris lives on the edge of town, with the wild wheat growing around his steps, and when he opens the door to Viktor’s knock, his face is made of hard lines and his jaw stiff. He stares at Yuuri for several long taunt moment, but he lets them in nonetheless.

Its later, when Yuuri is cooing to Chris’s cat, that Chris pulls Viktor into a separate room with his warm eyes cold, and all Viktor can think is that he should have known to expect this.

He had been familiar Chris for years. They had met at court over a decade ago, both studying under the same strict and malicious tutors, even if they had been bound for different lives. 

It was not a surprise that Chris was wary of the fae, a fear that had blossomed like poison ivy after a kelpie had tricked him into getting onto the creature's back and and nearly succeeded in drowning him, had his mother not startled him enough to fall off the fae. This was a fear that had only grown after Orphia.

But somehow, some small part of Viktor had wished that Chris would be able to see Yuuri as Viktor could.

Instead the man had pulled Viktor by his arm, an unconscious mirroring of what Viktor had done to Yuuri several hours earlier in the day, and hissed at him with his strong accent and rolling ‘r’s, “What do you think you're doing? He’s _fae,_ Viktor.”

“He promised to help me.” Viktor mutters, unable to meet the hazel gaze of his friend. “He wouldn’t hurt me.” 

Chris only laughed at him. “What do you think the fae do then? Shouldn’t you know this better than I? All they do is trick and hurt people. What will he take in return for his help? Your body? Your life?”

“No,” Viktor snapped.

“Then what, Viktor? You know how the Fae work. They never offer help out of natural goodness, they _always_ take something in return.”

“I know,” Viktor murmurs. It was true. He had seen the horrors of the fae. He had seen Duergars drown countless people, tricking them with honey sweet words and delicately placed touches, luring them to their death. He had seen the ugly Killmoulis haunt mills until people went mad, seen the Glaistig, her part goat, part human body hidden by her green robes, seduce men before tearing them apart, and he had seen the Bean-Nighe washing the bloody garments of those who would die soon, responding to terror with glee.

But he had also seen the softer side, the kinder side. The Abatwa, no bigger than an ant, who showed themselves to a pregnant woman to help them. He had seen the Fyglia protect their chosen person to their death, and more than anything, Viktor had heard the stories of the Fae who fell in love with humans, to live and die next to them like any other lover.

Through all of this, all Viktor could do was hope that Yuuri was what Viktor thought he was.

But he couldn’t say this to Chris, couldn’t explain something so complicated and important. Instead, he looks down at his hands and says, “There was more to the Orphia story.”

Chris gasps, his hand turning white at the joints of his knuckles when Viktor pulls down the collar of his tunic to show the slippery blue fish tattooed into his chest like a second heart.

It has three scales, and all he can think is ‘ _my mother’s name is Irina’_ as fear sink its claws deep enough into Viktor that he forgets how to breath.

Chris doesn’t say anything, but when he looks back out the doorway to where his cat is inhabiting the lap of the fae that he had just warned Viktor bout, his face is longer so hard, and he doesn’t say anything else about Yuuri.

“What was the name of your cat again?” Viktor asks, both to break the tension and because the name is a slippery evasive thing, but when Chris turns to look at him, his face is shocked and flat. Viktor begins to realize that something is wrong.

“Viktor,”  Chris murmurs, his voice oddly emotionless, “we named my cat together when we got him. His name is Tallulah.”

Viktor doesn't know how to answer when he can't summon the memories that Chris is talking about. Instead, he nods like he simply misplaced the thought, tucking the name into the back of his mind.   

But in the morning, Chris helps them on their journey, taking them halfway down the dusty road until one could no longer see his house, after filling their packs with their needed supplies.

And when he turns to go, Chris pulls Viktor into his arms, maybe afraid that it would be the last time that would ever see each other, and wishes them luck on their travels, and for Viktor.

* * *

  
By the fifth day of traveling through the human kingdom, both of their packs were lighter than before, but still bruisingly heavy. Viktor wears unease like a second skin.

At each town that they had passed through, with their faces hidden under thick hoods despite the heat, people had hurtled insults at Yuuri as if they were physical object. And each time, Yuuri had done nothing, looking only straight ahead and kept walking.

They were going to pass through the third and final village today, as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky with each step, and when Viktor glances at Yuuri, his shoulders were raught stiff with tension.

They had passed a group of soldiers on horseback along the way, and while they waved Viktor aside without a passing glance, they had pulled Yuuri to the side of the road, until he answered every question with his eyes downcast and his voice demurred. And when Viktor and Yuuri moved to leave and continue on their way, the soldiers had kicked up the stifling dust with the horses hooves until neither of them could breath.

Viktor had never liked the soldiers before, but he had never hated them as much as he had that day.

* * *

  
The village came onto the horizon with brightly colourful roofs and tightly packed buildings a little after noon, several leagues away but visible down the winding hillside path.

The previous night, as they had sat in front of the fire, surrounded by the low grasses, Yuuri and Viktor had agreed to spend their final night in the human kingdom there, to be able to restock and gather their last needed supplies before attempting the more arduous side of their journey with the light of the rising sun.

Yuuri had agreed, even if hesitation was written across his face, and Viktor had been grateful, and somehow slightly relieved, to be able to spend one last night in a world that he knew. Even if it wasn't always kind, it was one that he trusted.

It offered him one last chance to pretend that nothing was wrong.

Viktor and Yuuri finally reached the village when the church in the midst of town had tolled six long mournful times, and the sun was low on their necks.

In some ways, Viktor was happy that the marketplace, while still bustling, was quieter than normal, the buzz of the day having passed already, and he could slip from one stall to next, with his hood bunched around his face and shoulders like armor.

But, it's when he is distracted, looking at the fine silks in rich passionate pinks and greens, running his fingers along the soft fabric, and thinking how Yuuri would look in the midnight blue tunic with gold thread, that he hears the shout from the crowd, and he tenses automatically, whirling around. 

He had expected it to be a human that had spoken, but instead, a small boy with bright straw hair with a shock of red, that reminded Viktor of fire, bursts out of the crowd with a flurry, an iron bracelet on his wrist and the same surrounding redness that Yuuri,  and rose coloured stone clinging to the edges of his words.

Viktor was not fluent in the language of the fae, where words flowed like water or alcohol, each syllable sounding like a note, but over the years he had learned a scattering of words. When the boy turns to Yuuri, his face flushed with excitement ad something else unreadable, Viktor can only pick out a couple phrases in the fast paced waterfall of noise.

“Katsuki Yuuri! Katsuki Yuuri!” the boy says, his hands clasped in front of his body, and his face shimmering, seeming oblivious to Yuuri’s discontent, and Viktor can only wonder how the boy knows Yuuri.

The boy keeps excitedly repeating something about… hope, maybe? Viktor is not sure, the words blurring together as they tumble past, but he keeps hearing ‘ _dawnsio,’_ over and over again, and Viktor makes a mental note to ask Yuuri later at the inn, what the small excited fae had said to him.

Yuuri’s face had softened when he had looked at the younger fae who wore enthusiasm and eagerness like an art. Viktor had stopped trying to pick out the few words that he knew, instead studying the dark haired fae and thinking how _lucky_ he was to have met him, and how much he still didn’t know about him, and how much he still wanted to learn.

The boy was still talking to Yuuri, his hands dancing, face beaming. But somehow, when he clasps his hands in almost a bow, inclining his head to the dark haired fae, he speaks again, slower than before, and a single word catches Viktor’s attention: _Cymysgryw_.

_Cymysgryw_?

He had only heard that word hurled at the fae with barbs and snake venom dripping from it, each time coming from the mouth of another fae. But when the straw haired boy had said it to Yuuri, Yuuri had looked mildly at him, his face gentle and somehow understanding, and the word itself had lacked the cruelty it usually carried.

‘What had been the full sentence?’ Viktor thinks as he stares at them, the boy had said something personal. _‘I’_ Viktor thinks. The boy had said something about himself and the hissed word.

Viktor hadn’t noticed when the atmosphere of the market had shifted, looking instead at Yuuri and struggling to understand the flowing tongue of the Fae. It’s when the booming footsteps of heavy boots on the stone paved streets sound next to him that Viktor knows, deep down, that something is profoundly, inherently wrong.

It’s the same intuition that had kept him alive for years, and with his head fills with static and white noise, he can only think, ‘ _Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri._ ’

There are two guards, each one clad in the navy blue uniform that seems stifling in the early spring heat. Iron swords hang at their waists, and they stop before Yuuri and the other, younger, fae boy.

Yuuri had been crouching, but with the guards approaching him, he rises slowly, and when he stands, with his back impossibly straight and one foot slightly behind the other and hands loosely curled into the starting of fists at his sides, Viktor realizes, maybe for the first time, that Yuuri stood like he knew how to fight.

It is an odd awareness, Viktor thinks, but when he reflects on each confrontation before, in the past villages, with the people who stood afraid of Yuuri but cruelly toyed with him nonetheless, all he can muse is that it makes sense.  

One of the guard grabs Yuuri’s slender wrist, and Viktor, standing behind both of them, is so _terribly afraid._ He wants to move, but fear has curled thorned vines around his ankles, and Viktor has forgotten what terror this strong tasted like. He had not missed it.

The guard only looks at Yuuri’s iron bracelet, the metal links shining falsely golden in the setting sun, and Viktor can only pray that he won't notice the way that the bracelet had turned Yuuri’s arm red, or what that meant.

“What is your business here?” one asks, his harsh voice seeming crude compared to the dancing language that had fit Yuuri like a persona, spoken moments before.

Yuuri barely stands in front of the boy, his stance painfully deceiving and relaxed, and when Viktor looks at him he expects to see fear discolouring his brown eyes.

Instead, Viktor only sees fire.

“I was traveling through your village, and happened to stop to have a conversation,” Yuuri hisses, his voice tense, but as flat and even as the planes north of the king’s palace.

The second guard still hasn’t released Yuuri’s wrist, his companion standing slightly behind him, their faces dark and menacing, but Viktor steps next to Yuuri, looking to be the calm he did not feel, tucking his newly bought wares into his pack like nothing is wrong. “He is my traveling partner,” he says as he pulls his hood down to reveal his face. The guards go white, dropping Yuuri’s hand like a hot coal and brushing past them without another word.

* * *

  
Yuuri stands outside, watching people trickle in and out of the pub, his back leaning against the wall of the small stone building across the street from the inn, and counts his breaths.

It had seemed simple at the time, after the guards left. Viktor had turned to Yuuri, his gaze dark with concern and unreadable in the dimming light. They had split up, Viktor going back to the marketplace to purchase the last of their needed items before they would leave as the sun rose, turning the world to gold. While Viktor had finished gathering supplies, Yuuri was supposed to rent their room at the nearby inn and pub.

It had’t seemed like a big deal when Viktor had suggested it, and it still didn’t, but as countless people traveled in and  out of the dimly lit, propped open door, Yuuri couldn’t breath.

It was pathetic, he thought, as he pressed his fingertips hard enough to bruise into his thighs. Viktor was capable, and had done so much, and yet, Yuuri could not even rent a room for a single night.

He brought his hand to his mouth, his fingertips barely brushing across his lips, and the scent of mint that follows is sharp and pungent enough for him to taste it, heavy and bitter and biting on his tongue.

When Yuuri had been seven, he had eaten a rose petal for the first time, the bright pinks and yellows and whites enticing and seemingly so sweet. But when he had put it in his mouth and swallowed, he had found that his throat had seemed smaller, tighter, and when he had brought his small fingertips to his neck, he had been unable to swallow. He had sucked in a panicked breath through his nose and found that he could barely breath.

The feeling of standing outside of the pub was different, but somehow still akin to that.

He had gone to his mother, and she had done her best to soothe his frantic shallow breaths, talking to him in a hushed whisper, the scent of plum blossoms forming a cocoon around them.

Yuuri thinks about how he had been so afraid then, each breath becoming more and more strained and difficult, and how after his mother had coaxed it away with her soft magic, how sweet each breath had tasted. He thinks about how Viktor had looked so fearful after the guard had grabbed Yuuri’s wrist.

And maybe not for the first time, Yuuri wonders what Viktor was afraid of. He knew what he was afraid of himself, but Viktor was still an enigma, a mystery, and Yuuri wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

So he stands there, with his back pressed against the cold, cold stone, his fingers against his throat in a reminisce of a memory, the scent of mint like a blanket as he fights to find courage to go inside. He thinks about the other time when Viktor had been coloured dark and pale with terror, so painfully honest and open.

It had been night when Viktor had approached him, his presence starting Yuuri into dropping the small glass bulb of touchable, contained magic, and when Viktor had asked, biting his lip, Yuuri had gone to him.

Viktor had taken off his tunic, and when Yuuri had seen the curse for the first time, the small, achingly painful embodiment of someone else’s hurt, Yuuri had brought his fingers to it, wanting to reach out and touch it, to heal it, to take it away. He hadn’t known what he was expecting, whether a spark or a tremor, but when he had ran his fingertips along the searingly beautiful, shimmering blue, he had only felt Viktor’s heartbeat, fast and erratic, as if replaced with the loud, uneven drums of festival, as fast as a running rabbit. 

Tonight, Viktor had looked like that again, and Yuuri thought that if he were to have felt his heartbeat again, it would be just as rapid and fluttery.

But now, as Yuuri stands, faced with what should be so simple, and somehow still unable to get a clear breath, Yuuri swallows, his own heart beating in unsteady tandem, his magic tastes almost sweet. He thinks about about Viktor’s fear as a motivation.

When he finally walks through the open doorway, the smell of stale beer and human is almost overpowering. And when he hides his hands in his pocket, he finds that they are trembling.

The man at the table in the back of the room has a tangled beard of the fishermen of the old stories, reeking of sweat and alcohol, and when Yuuri approaches him, he does not look at Yuuri.

“Excuse me,” Yuuri says quietly, his voice barely heard in the midst of the rumble of noise in the room. The man still does not look up, staring pointedly down at the papers spread out in front of him with his teeth showing.

“Excuse me,” Yuuri insists louder, “I need to rent a room, please.”

It’s only then does the man glance upward, his face twisted into a snarl and voice cutting, his letters carrying a small burr. “We don't serve your kind here.”

“I’m sorry?” Yuuri murmurs, “I need to rent a room for the night, for my human traveling partner and I.”

The man only sneers and him. “Tough luck, we don't serve you here.”

A burly man with flaxen hair pulled back stands behind the first man, “You heard him, we don't want you bastards around these parts.”

Yuuri doesn’t look at him, only attempting to make one last silent plea to the man at the desk, but it's as if the entire bar had gone silent, their eyes hot and burning on Yuuri’s back, and he has never hated the iron bracelet in plain sight on his wrist more than then.

It takes all of his courage to walk out of the inn with his back straight and head high, willing the sharp prickling of his eyes and the bright scarlet flush of shame to wait until he makes it outside.

The sun is low on the sky, but the air still hot when Yuuri leaves the doorway, and he walks down the dirt road, ducking behind a buildings into the shadows to wipe his eyes. He bites the inside of his mouth until it bleeds, and sets off to find Viktor. 

* * *

  
Viktor first went to the court when he was nine.

He had gone with his mother, the bastard son of a earl who was kind enough to give them noble status, but not kind enough to lift them out of the dirt house on the edge of town, and not kind enough to give them enough money to buy more than bread each day.

Viktor had followed his mother, with her long brightly coloured skirts of crimson and deep blues that had brushed the floor when she walked, her long silver hair unbound, tumbling and rippling down her back, clutching at her hand, and following the scent of blueberries that had been her ever quiet companion.

They weren’t kind to her, the people at the court, mocking her work hardened hands and the mud on her fancy slippers, but Viktor would never forget the way she had walked, with her head held high and her back straight.

It was customary, for the noble families to bring their young sons to court that month, to introduced them to the king. And somehow, in the midst of the chaos, the young prince’s dog had gone missing, and the prince had come to the court furious, his eyes still red and cheeks puffy from his badly concealed crying.

Viktor hadn’t been sure what had happened, or how he had found the dog, with its long face and hard greedy eyes, a gold collar around its gristly neck, in a small courtyard far from the prince’s chambers, but when had brought it back to the court, the king had been shocked.

There had been a hiding spell on it, the court doctors, had said. And when the king had asked how Viktor had found the dog, his guards tensed and poised, their eyes full of suspense, Viktor hadn’t known what to say. His voice had seemed rough and strangely quiet in the large echoey room, and he had never felt smaller in his life.

They had asked him to stay in the court afterward, to train under the current king’s seekers, but his mother had pulled him away, refusing the posed offer, and Viktor would never forget the way the King’s icy gray eyes had followed them as they left.

The letters had begun to come the month after Viktor had visited the court, and his mother had torn up each one, throwing the scraps of paper worth more that their combined dinners’ into the fire.

Viktor’s mother had died the week before his tenth birthday, the fever colouring her naturally pale cheeks’ red and blotchy, until she could no longer stand, and when her long hair had started to fall out in clumps.

Viktor had buried her with daisies and her favorite red skirt, and he hadn’t needed the poorly hidden pitying glances to know that her death had not been natural.

His father had come to the funeral, and Viktor had never hated him more.

He had accepted the letter that bid him to court on his tenth birthday and he never spoke to his father again.

At the court, he had learned how to recognize magic by its taste and smell, by its feeling, had learned the weaknesses of the fae in neat black and white penned categories, how to survive to the end of his strength and still keep fighting.

And all the while, Viktor fought tooth and nail to claw his bloody way to the top.

He had been at the bottom, and Viktor had never wanted to feel like that again, but when the guards had grabbed Yuuri for speaking his native tongue, Viktor feared the uncontrollable, unfair cruelty that he had finally escaped.

And when Yuuri found him in the marketplace that same day, the twilight settling around them like a physical creature, his jaw was set to keep it from trembling, telling Viktor that they would not let him rent a room, Viktor felt that same fire rekindle inside him again.

* * *

  
Viktor leads them back to the inn with fury in his stride, and all Yuuri can do is follow mutely behind him, his pack seeming to grow heavier with each passing step.

The silver haired man doesn’t hesitate when he steps through the doorway, commanding the presence of the entire room. And when all eyes turn to look at them, Yuuri feels like a coward, to have only returned with the help of his human partner, and somehow, he is caught between the burning hatred of those in the inn, and of himself.

Yuuri isn’t sure if it's the way that Viktor strides to the desk in the back of the dingy room packed with bodies, the way that he slams his open palm onto the wood, or the way that he leans over and hisses, that makes the bearded man who had denied the room to Yuuri look up, but when he does, a snarl is already present on his face.

“We need a room,” Viktor snaps, his voice oddly toneless and leaving no room for flexibility.

“We already told the freak behind you that we don’t rent rooms to the fae.”

They end up with something of a compromise: they would rent two rooms, one, a normal room, for Viktor, and one, that was on the far end of a hall that squeaked with each footstep and next to the onion smelling kitchen, for Yuuri.

When Yuuri looked at Viktor, his lip twisted between his teeth, his unease mirrored on Viktor’s features, Yuuri knew that he wasn’t the only one with a sinking, _sinking_ feeling in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

  
When Viktor wakes to a blackness that is thick enough to swim though, swallowing the edges of top and bottom, and severing his connection to the world, he already knows something is wrong.

He had been dreaming, about Orphia, but Yuuri had been there too, a thin twisted version who smiled like a wolf and spun coins between his fingers, and when Viktor woke, sweaty and panicked, a new scale had blossomed on the fish.

Viktor woke with a small black stone of dread, the taste of copper on his tongue, and a crushing worry in the back of his throat.

He thinks he heard a trace of a footstep, the hushed sense of a whisper, and Viktor thought about the shared look between himself and Yuuri, the quiet, pressing, and desperate sense of foreboding that was highlighted on both of their faces.

There was an unmistakable chink down the long narrow hallway, the noise creeping under Viktor’s door like a snake, and all he can think is ‘ _dammit_.’

And then all he can think is, ‘ _Yuuri_ .’ 

* * *

  
The pitifully thin wooden door to Yuuri’s room was already throw open, dim light flickering out into the narrow hallway, and even though Viktor had expected it in some ways, the dread that filled his stomach crept up into his throat, heavy and prickly and suffocating.

It’s only the years of bloody training from the court that saves Viktor from falling when he careens into the dark room, the floorboards announcing his presence with a dull throaty wail, and his pulse clamoring in his ears.

There are three people in Yuuri’s room, the overpowering scent of cheap rum and beer surrounding them in a haze, and even in the shady lightly, Viktor can pick out the mean bearded face of the man who had denied Yuuri a room. They had come empty handed, armed only with their already curled fists, and somehow, in the uneasy quietness of the night, that seems almost worse. They cluster around Yuuri, the dark haired fae already standing, his hair mussed from sleep, and his shirt slipping off one shoulder, but his feet were placed solidly on the floor, his knees slightly bent, and his back facing wall.

Viktor had expected, and hoped, for the three men to turn and look at him when the old wooden floorboard had shrieked his silted arrival, but none turn, each focusing at looking at Yuuri, and when Viktor follows their gaze to study his companion, he can't help the fear that blossoms in his mouth, ashy and copper tasting.

He had expected Yuuri to look afraid, to wear the fear that he had seen at the dusky marketplace and at the inn, but instead Yuuri only looks furious, his eyes darker that Viktor has ever seen them. All Viktor can think about is the way that he had risen into a fighting stance, so similar to the one he wore now, with the guards in the marketplace.

He thinks about the dread curdling in his stomach like a living thing, and about how desperately afraid he is for both of them, and he thinks ‘ _Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri_.’

He thinks how he has not felt a fear this strong for years.

He thinks, that if he were to swallow a star, this is what it would feel like, oh so painfully hot, and as if he is falling through shards of burnt glass and paper and blood, watching something he should have known to stop.

Its as if it happened in slow motion, the three men creeping towards Yuuri, and in the dim light, Viktor can’t tell them apart from their shadows, their faces gleaming only gaunt skulls, and when he blinks, he thinks he has missed something, like he's seeming the world in single, motionless shots, and somehow, they got all jumbled together.

Viktor blinks, and one of the men has reached for Yuuri, and all Vikor hear is is own heartbeat, the word ‘ _monster’_ clambering around in his head like a stone.

He blinked again,and thinks maybe he had missed something, because Yuuri has the man’s fist caught in in is own whitening grip, and his face made up of shades of slate, hard and unforgiving.  _  
_

Yuuri fights like a dance, lunging towards the raggedy man who had organized it. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time, and Viktor feels so useless, the years of training stifled with the terror that holds him back and the knowledge that if he moves into the quickly moving fight, it will only make things worse. But he still can’t help but clench his fists and bite the inside of his mouth with worry.

He blinks, and Yuuri hisses something about the Truce between the kingdoms, about the unspoken customs, and the man goes pale, twisting to escape Yuuri’s grasp, and for the second time that day, Viktor understands how someone could be afraid of the kinder fae and how someone could be afraid of _Yuuri_.

Viktor stops blinking when Yuuri turns to look at the man who dived towards him, and when Viktor sees his face, half painted with shadows, he doesn't seem to hold the humanness that had fooled Viktor at the tavern the first time, instead his face is sharp and ethereal, and if he were to show his teeth, Viktor would have bet that they would have been pointed.

There is a movement, a flash, something Viktor doesn't see past a blur, and one of the men is on the floor, his hands between his legs and body instinctively curled up in the fetal position, a sticky strand of saliva, alcohol, and puke trailing from his mouth to puddle at the floor.

The second man is still held by his wrist in Yuuri’s iron grasp, but the dark haired fae isn’t looking at him.  Instead he is looking the the third man, the one with the beard, the one who had denied him courtesy of a room. Viktor swallows, the sound loud in the quiet room, and Yuuri turns to look at him for the first time that evening. His face softens, and, somehow, it becomes the same face that Viktor had fallen for at the pub, the one that Viktor had sought out across a kingdom, the one that Viktor slowly began to love. All Viktor knows is relief.

Yuuri meets his gaze, quiet and still somehow the same look that he had worn when he had brought the man to his knees, because at heart, Yuuri was a contrast, something beautiful and kind, who wore sharp edges like a second coat, and still could be the same being that Viktor would trust his life too without a second thought.

It was scary in some ways, to be that willing to see a side of someone, only brought out in the stillness of a pale night, and still be willing to move on and know them.

But when Yuuri looks back the bearded man, snapping Viktor back into the reality spread out before them, Viktor is no longer afraid. He blinks again, and when he opens his eyes, Yuuri is still in the same place, and Viktor can finally suck in a mouthful of stale air.

He tosses the man he held by the wrist onto the dirty floor, the wood panelling creaking ominously under his weight, and when Yuuri smiles at the bearded man, it is the same smile that he wore on the first night that he met Viktor, with knives for teeth and made for war.  “I am in the protection of the Treaty tonight, whatever way you try a spin this, you still attacked me first and I am in the grace of the Truce.”

“You can't prove that,” the man slurred, the cheap beer that he had drank like water colouring his words in burnt orange, and it vaguely occurs to Viktor that those were the first words he had heard the man speak that evening.

“Oh,” Yuuri murmurs, his words laced with poison and steel, and the scent of mint bitter, and sickly, cloying around him in a haze, “memories are much more telling the mouth.”

It's less of a treat and more of a promise, but in the murky lighting and the smell of mint overpowering and sitting heavy on the back on one’s tongue, the bearded man recoils, the fear of breaking the treaty, even for a small occurrence to much to bear with the thrum of alcohol hissing through his veins and when he looks at Viktor, defeat is ugly on his face.

He creeps out of the floor like a kicked dog, its tail between his legs and Yuuri follows him, dragging the unconscious man by the collar of his shirt, to throw him ungracefully into the hallway with a thud, while the man with the wrist cradles next to his body slinks out after them.

It doesn't feel like victory when Yuuri turns to look at Viktor, the same emotion lingering on the other man’s face like a cloud, and when Viktor opens his mouth, the fear that had burned his hands and throat makes his voice rough and making him say what he had been to afraid to say earlier that night. “I’m staying with you.”

Yuuri looks at him, one eye closed with a yawn, and doesn’t protest.

* * *

  
They leave early the next morning, when the rising sun softens the world into quiet shades of pinks, oranges and blues.

Viktor had rolled over to study Yuuri short minutes before the sunrise in the shared lumpy bed at the inn, only to find the fae already awake, his jaw tight and if Vikor had looked closely, he would of thought that Yuuri’s eyes were red from crying.

It was by unspoken mutual agreement that they both packed their bags, creeping out with only the skittering of mice and a single golden haired youth to see their departure, and with the slow light, Yuuri can only think about the other time he had crept out of an inn at the slightest light with the heavy burden of shame and regret. 

They were the first to visit the border guard in the morning, the line between the kingdoms a little over a stone throw from the village where they had stayed the past night. The man had yawned, grumpy to have been woken so early,  taking their documents and scanning them briefly, starting slightly when he read Viktor’s name, but clips off the iron bracelet from Yuuri’s wrist with a snap.

And when Yuuri looked at Viktor, rubbing his red stained wrist, Viktor knew that he wasn’t the only one who finally felt like they could finally breath again once they had stepped inside the towering trees that grew along the border of the fae kingdom.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 


	2. fioled drilliw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It was half moments later, when she turns to look Viktor in the face, her back pressed against his chest, that she seems to grow taller, and when he meets her gaze, he can understand how this could be the same fae who had reduced Yuuri to nothing with only a single word. “It would be such a shame,” she whispers against his neck, her voice eerie and as hollow as wind, “to lose what you didn’t have, wouldn’t it?"_
> 
> _Viktor doesn’t understand until she looks at Yuuri. ___

**Part Two: Fioled Drilliw**

Viktor had traveled both kingdoms when he had been the King’s seeker, had seen courts full of life and extravagance in every carefully trimmed blossom and leaf, had seen the dark sides in the rampant poverty of the human world, the cruelty of the fae, but looking up the ancient trees that surrounding the fae border was something that was a entirely new experience.

The trees were towering, their gnarled, twisted trunks wider than several of Viktor’s arm spans, and stretching higher than he could see, filtering out the sunlight until the blue of the sky seem unreliable, and they walked in the flickering shadows far below.

It was strange in some ways, the forest seemed quiet, absent of the constant fluttering of nearby life that a normal forest should have, the only sound a single bird’s song, far overhead, its tune dancing and, somehow, achingly, painfully familiar.

The path they followed ran underneath the outstretched branches of the trees, lush, brilliantly green plants clustering around the strip of bare dirt, until the once road was barely wide enough for two people.

Maybe it was the lingering trepidation that the unnatural silence brought, or maybe it's was the small bit of courage that Viktor had gained last night, when he had told Yuuri has was going to stay the rest of the night with him, and Yuuri had only looked at him with his dark, unreadable eyes, and didn’t protest. But, as Viktor walks along the slightly overgrown path, his gaze dancing with curiosity, flitting from one thing to the next, Viktor finally asks the question that had been bothering him for a while, “Where did you learn to fight?”

He had half expected Yuuri to deny it, claiming that he didn’t know how to fight with a smile made of feathers and fools gold, but instead,Yuuri had only tightened his jaw and was looking steadily forward, his knuckles white on the straps of his pack. “It's a long story,” Yuuri murmurs quietly, his voice still somehow fitting between the old trees and the forgotten stories they hold. He rubs his leather bracelet, and the scent of mint that blossoms into the air is sharp and poignant, reminding Viktor of another bracelet that Yuuri had worn and another piece of what was Yuuri, laid out before him.

“And…” He pauses, the shards of glass of Yuuri’s unspoken story falling into place as he speaks them out loud as they follow the winding trail, “it somehow connects with the odd way that the iron bracelet affected you, also, right?”

“Why are you asking?” Yuuri asks, his voice carved and pointed, defensive and afraid. It a brittle contrast to the quieter Yuuri, and Viktor can only draw back, biting his lip and looking down.

“I'm curious, that's all,” he says. ‘ _I want to_ know _you_ ,’ he doesn’t say, ‘ _please, I want you to trust me._ ’

The dark haired fae didn’t respond, their steady footfalls take place of their heartbeats on the dusty road, and the quiet seems louder than before Viktor had broached the topic, living, and flickering like a breath among the trees. He had swallowed, once, and then twice, and given up hope for Yuuri to answer, instead looking  to the looming trees that marked their steadfast way.

But when Yuuri does speak, the quiet minutes pulled out like cotton thread snapping with his faint and apprehensive voice, Viktor can’t help but feel like he has won some small victory. “Do you remember the word _Cymysgryw_?”

Yuuri taints the letters with his own accent, slightly different that when the boy had said it, and slightly different than when Viktor had heard it before, but with his tone a shade of sadness so blue, Viktor recognizes it.

How could he not, after all?

“He called himself it, right?”

“No,” Yuuri says, without looking at him, his voice heavy with stone feathers, shame, dropping down to almost a whisper, “he didn’t say ‘ _Cymysgryw_ like I’. he said ‘ _Cymysgryw_ like us’.”

_Us._

There was a one syllable difference between ‘I’ and ‘us’, only the sound a single trilling drawn out letter, and Viktor hadn’t known the river dancing language enough to understand, but in the quiet, quiet forest, and Yuuri bearing open his heart, Viktor is afraid to ask to confirm what he already knows it means. He doesn’t need to ask to know that it is an insult, hurled at the fae who carry their magic in a scent, who are just a beautiful and so much kinder.

Halfling is a cruel word, and an even crueler one in the language of the fae.

Viktor should have known, with the red blush from the iron links on his wrist, and the sharp, floating smell of mint that followed Yuuri like a whisper, like a companion, and like a dream.

He wants to tell Yuuri that it fits, not in the harsh way that other fae would hurl it, but in the way that his magic clings to his fingers like a physical thing, for the way that sunshine seems to linger on his face and ebony dark eyelashes, in his hair and in his eyes, and the way that Yuuri was so stupidly selfless to help Viktor, that sometimes Viktor thinks he can’t breath.

But instead he doesn’t say it, swallowing the words like a swig of vodka, burning at the back of his throat, before glancing down at his own hands and then at the trail ahead.

He’s afraid to look at Yuuri, to know that he will see the look of pure, guarded, raw emotions sprayed across his features, and he doesn’t know how to put into words and express the sheer gratitude for the trust Yuuri had given him, ‘ _thank you_ ,’ not seeming nearly strong enough.

“That doesn’t explain how you know to fight though,” Viktor says instead, and when he catches a glimpse of Yuuri out of the corner of his vision, the fae had looked relieved.

“Yes it does,” Yuuri hisses, the sharp edges and anger pulsing back in his tone, lacing it with green rose barbs and viper poison.

“I don’t understand,” Viktor says slowly, pushing his tongue against the inside of his teeth, and his nails digging crescent into the palm of his hand.

Yuuri laughs, his teeth as white and gleaming as a wolf, his smile akin to the grey stormy sea that bordered both lands, “We’re expendable in this kingdom. We learn how to fight so others do not have to.”

Viktor opened his mouth and then closed it, swallowing. “I still don’t understand.”

The anger had left Yuuri’s voice, and when he met Viktor’s gaze, looking out from underneath his long soot coloured lashes, there was something unreadable about his eyes. “Halflings are taken to the court to be trained as guards to protect the higher level fae.”

“From whom?” Viktor demands, startled, his eyes wide. His own experience with the fae had always been that of trickery and fear, having to fight on the defensive side, afraid of what he could not predict, nor fight against.

“From each other,” Yuuri states simply, his face oddly blank, ash coloured pain staining his mouth, and all Viktor can do is blink at him.

‘ _Of course_ ,’ Viktor thinks, ‘ _who else would it be?_ ’ He feels greedy as he opens his mouth to ask another question, as if Yuuri had not just shown Viktor the purest essence of his hurt and shame, as if he had not laid out the biggest secret of his life. But in some ways, it doesn't feel like _enough_ , because Viktor  wants to learn everything about Yuuri while he still can, to know his stories and his thoughts.

He wants to know, truly know, Yuuri while he can still remember him.

“But your stance was rusty?” He says, the question forcing its way out like a caged animal, or a need, but Yuuri doesn’t look bothered and Viktor is grateful, because others in his life in the past would only have given Viktor a flat, grey-eyed stare.

“I haven't fought in a long time,” Yuuri hums, a trace of a smile on lips, pleased and sly at the same time, and Viktor loves it.

“Why?” He muses, and then feels guilty to be prying for the things the fae doesn’t want to say outloud, for not knowing when to stop.

Yuuri only makes a low, quiet noise, breathy and whispery, and for a moment Viktor can only focus on that, the sound blocking out the ringing song on the bird overhead, and maybe for the first time in the long time, this is what he thinks it mean to feel alive, not to have it be perfect, but the way that the straps of his pack dug into his shoulders and his feet ached, but also the way that Yuuri looked at him, and truly saw him, the way that he way willing to talk so deeply about things that Viktor have never heard someone say out loud before, and in some ways it was enough.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri thinks about courage as he walks along with Viktor in the ethereal forest, surrounded by the trees thousands of years older than them, the infinite stories of past times spelled into their bark in a language that neither of them can read, and with the leather bracelet looped around his wrist giving him comfort, he thinks about Viktor's question.

He thinks about how he had told Viktor the truth about what what Minami has said to him in the marketplace, the sound between ‘ _me_ ’ and ‘ _us’_ nearly indistinguishable, and how it would have been so easy to brush it off, but how when he had open his mouth to say that, he felt like he was suffocating, drowning in the shame of the secret of which he had no control.

He thinks about how it had taken all of his bravery, all of his courage, and somehow, all of his fear as well, to tell Viktor, all while the painful wanting to trust Viktor bouncing around in the back of his mind like a stone.

But Viktor hadn’t cast him off, hadn’t wanted to get away from Yuuri because of that, and, for now, it was enough to be able to swallow the salty taste of fear that had lingered in his throat.

But when Viktor had asked for the rest of story, of why his stance was rusty, unknowing of how complicated and tangled the answer to the question was, Yuuri had hesitated, the answer so painfully honest and intimate, and even if he had told Viktor the rest, this was something else.

But maybe it the the pounding relief of being back in the fae kingdom, of being able to breath, and the air tasting familiar again, the quiet smell of violets and rain, and the lingering magic settling back onto his skin like an embrace. Or maybe its freedom from the iron bracelet he had worn the past week, the constant prickling ache that it had brought to his body, making his movements slow and limbs heavy, but Yuuri _wants_.

He wants to be able to tell him the little things, his stories and his memories, to be able to share his thoughts with someone in an honest way that he had never been able to do before, and with the giddiness brought by the way that Viktor had handled the confession of Yuuri status of a halfling, Yuuri wants to try.

But even with the wanting pressing inside of his body, Yuuri had stayed silent, the fear of what could go wrong, no matter how slim the chance, muffling his thoughts like the first snowfall.

They had a little more than three weeks to reach the court.

They had a little less than three weeks until Viktor lost everything.

There were others vying for the queen’s favor, humans from all over the kingdom And when Yuuri had stayed in the numerous inns, he had heard about many of them, from passing conversations and snippets of sentences, about a girl with a sickness that was slowing stealing away her body, about a young dark haired man who went for glory, and about a boy with golden hair and a female guard whose hair was as red as living sparks.

To be able to beat them to the court, and to arrive wholly and on time, was not an easy task. But as their path spread out in front of them, weaving and snaking around the ancient trees before finally disappearing into a sliver, curling out beyond where he could see, and when Yuuri glanced at Viktor, with his silver hair tousled by the wind, and his smile blossoming like the small hidden wildflowers that grew next to the dirt road that they were following, Yuuri can only find excitement for the adventure ahead.  

 

* * *

 

 

That night, inside the land of the fae, the silence folded over Yuuri and Viktor like a blanket, the towering trees nearby blocking out the shimmery night sky. They had bought fresh fruit and vegetables at the market before they left, and Yuuri was grateful, as he bit into an apple, crunching it sharply, the juice sweet to taste.

Yuuri had not thought about what Viktor had asked him.

He was afraid, in some ways, to acknowledge how much Viktor would know if he told him.

‘ _Never give away your secrets,’_ the fae always whispered, trading hushed voices and shadows like liquid gold, and yet, Yuuri wanted nothing more than to free himself from their shackles.

They had soup for dinner, the dried ingredients releasing a cloying aroma and a billowing steam as water was poured, and as Yuuri is blowing on the the hot spoonful of soup, he already knows he has made up his mind to tell Viktor.

Viktor pauses with his spoon halfway lifted when Yuuri calls his name, his voice soft and sounding as fragile as sand in the quiet, but when Viktor looks up, his face is eager, “You asked me why my stance was rusty. It is, because I haven’t fought in years.”

He paused, and then set down his bowl, and laces his knuckles in front of him, until they turn white, unsure of how to go on.

Across from him, Viktor looks at him with quiet, unreadable eyes.

Yuuri wets his lips, looks up, seeking silver in the sky, and then says, “Your remember what I said about being trained as guards?” When Viktor nods, he continues, “As a halfling, it is something that is… strongly suggested, and often enforced. But at the same time, there are other options, you just have to struggle to be able to get to them. I mean, my sister got out of going to the court because she doesn’t have magic. But, a little over five years ago, several members of the court came to the inn to ask me to train as a guard, and in a lot of ways, I could not say no.” Yuuri pauses, running his tongue along the inside of the teeth, before continuing. “And I guess another part of it was that I didn’t know if I _wanted_ to say no. I had been working at my family’s inn for several years, and I wanted to experience things other than that for a while. So I went.  

“The fae court is a fairly toxic place, regardless, even worse if you are a halfling, and I learned, early on and repeatedly, that I did not want to be a guard. But, like all promised made here, once you have committed, there is very little you can do to go back on your word.” Yuuri hesitates once more, before stopping to consider his next words. He leaned back on his arms, looking up to the the small sliver of the indigo sky, and quietly he wonders if the two sister moons are out tonight, hovering somewhere in the dark glittering sky, one the pure silver, and the other, darker, and hovering slightly behind the first, always partially hidden, worshiped by secret lovers and priests alike. But with the forest canopy, Yuuri can only see hundreds of stars, like pinpricks of light, in between the outstretched branches of the trees.

“But even more than the general dislike,” Yuuri trailed off again, before restarting, “I had been dancing since I was young, and to suddenly not be able to have time to practice anymore... was difficult. I started dancing in secret, after training and late at night, and one day, nearly two years after I first came to court, my close friend ended up seeing me practicing. Phichit already knew I was unhappy, and when he saw me, he thought it could be the ticket to getting us both in a different spot. We ended up coming up with this plan to get me, and hopefully us, out of the guard position.”

Yuuri fell silent once more and curled his tongue inside his mouth, he wants to to say, ‘ _ask me about how we pulled it off.’_

He wants to say, ‘ _it involved blindfolds, the colour silver, multiple friends, and deception.’_

He wants to say, ‘ _it was both one of the best memories I have, and the worse.’_

Because what can you say, to tell the entire story of weeks and weeks, that ended up changing his life?

‘ _You dance beautifully_ ,’ the queen had said as she gave him the golden earrings in her outstretched palms, her fingernails slender and moonlight pale, signifying his position as an entertainer the court.

And when Yuuri went back for the last night to the dorms with the other halflings, he could only cry onto Phichit’s shoulder, feeling like, in his attempt to free himself, he had only spun more chains around his body. And he hadn't known what to say when Phichit had asked, wanting to express how much he meant to him, his grief at leaving him, and he overwhelming fear of what was ahead.

Phichit had give him the simple wrapped leather bracelet that night, his smile tight, telling him so it was that Yuuri would not forget him, and Yuuri hadn’t know how to say that he never could.

He still wore it,  and he hadn’t forgotten Phichit with his bright sunshine smiles.

But Viktor doesn’t ask, and, maybe, in some ways Yuuri is grateful, because he would not have know what to say. Instead the silver haired man had looked at him, and them back up the the small sliver of night sky where the mirage of the two moons were hidden, and says quietly, “What happened after that?”

“I started to dance in the court for the queen.” It’s not the whole truth, pieces missing from the narrative, about how Yuuri had ended up dancing for the queen’s beautiful horned daughter, about how he had fought with every bone in his body until the queen had appointed Phichit to guard the princess, and about how all that Yuuri had worked for had ended on evening, as suddenly as it had started.

It still hurts too much, to tell someone else.

Viktor doesn't ask anything else, maybe sensing that it was not the end of the story, and Yuuri doesn’t say anything else, lies next to him, their backs pressed to the cold ground and shoulder barely brushing.

In the morning, there is shimmery white snow, blanketing the tiny leaf buds and flower blossoms, as the approaching scent of summer hangs heavy in the air.

By midday, the snow had melted, leaving behind only perfectly sharp footprints of where they had stepped.

 

* * *

 

 

There is an small animal at the edge of their camp, the next evening, as Yuuri pulls the copper cooking pot from their bag, it's long swishing tail brushing against the dirt before it flees back into the forest from which it came.

“It looks like Chris’s cat,” Yuuri says when he see it, yawning against the back of his hand, his bare feet dusty.

Viktor only looks at him strangely. “I didn’t know Chris had a cat,” he says slowly.

 

* * *

 

 

The two moons are visible in the sky, several days later when Viktor starts from his restless slumber to an deep, unsettled feeling of something being _wrong_.

He had been supposed to have been watching their camp as Yuuri slept, as they had taken up having someone guard the camp the farther they had traveled into the kingdom.

The trees of the forest were sparser, tall, willowy grass starting to filter in between the withered tree trunks and moss as the farther they traveled from the border, but when Viktor started awake, he could only be grateful that he could see a little better.

He stands up, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders slipping down to land on the dusty ground, but when he looked, there was nothing to be seen, the forest whispering in it own language, quietly in the wind, the wild creatures of the night murmuring slightly.

The feeling of something being off persisted in the tense moments later when Viktor sat back down, but he only woke Yuuri when he heard the music.

It was thin and reedy, high-pitched and almost akin to a wooden flute, a spider's dance as light as the wind, sending prickling chills down Viktor’s back as if someone was running their fingers down the notches of his spine, the thin silvery hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Yuuri grumbles when Viktor hisses at him, turning over to press his face into the clutched blanket, curling his body into a ball.

“Yuuri,” Viktor whispers, knife sharp, swatting at the the dark haired bundle of his travel companion hidden underneath the thread-worn shroud of warmth, “ _Yuuri_ , wake up! Listen!”

It was only then that Yuuri’s eyes cracked open, and when he looked at Viktor, first with a sulk written on his features, and then a look of recognition, and finally excitement. “Viktor!”

He was moving, and Viktor doesn’t understand, because Yuuri was pulling on his boots and discarding his blanket, all while the eerie echoes of the music got closer and sending shivers down Viktor’s body, but Yuuri is grinning, and when he looks at Viktor, his face alit, he says, “Come on!”

Every nerve in Viktor’s tense body tells him to move away from the sound, to curl up in a ball, to make his body as small as possible, to hide until the music had passed, but Yuuri is bouncing, almost bounding towards it, and when Viktor catches a glimpse of his face, he thinks he sees giddiness.

But whatever it was, for some buried, unknowable reason, and for a deep stupid longing, Viktor follows Yuuri.

They went to one of large trees that held guard the edge of their small, secluded camp, the trunk wide, and its tall branches stretching out across the starlit sky.

Yuuri looks at it, tilting his head back to see all the way to the top, the quiet light of the night framing his face in silver and gold,  and then back to the place where he had dropped his blanket earlier. He darts back to get it, slinging it over is shoulder before moving back to Viktor still stood.

The tree doesn’t have branches close to the ground, but when Yuuri touched the roughly hewn bark with delicate fingertips, one burst from the truck off the trunk with the shower of bark and splinters and pieces of wood. And when vaults himself onto it like a cat, balancing carefully, he looks back at Viktor, the blanket wrapped around his shoulder and a look of delight on his face, and Viktor know without him saying, that Yuuri wants Viktor to follow him.

They wound their way up the tree, each time Yuuri moving to leap to the next height, a branch always waiting for his feet for when he lands, when there was not one before, and all the while the quietly dancing, almost sinister tone, echoes around the forest, but the more Viktor listens to it as he follows Yuuri up the newly crafted stairway of tree limbs, the music loses its paralysing qualities.

It was only when Yuuri reached the lowest natural branch did he stop. The ground spread out, far far underneath them, dark and indigestible, the still burning fire a single flickering spot of light, and then Viktor looks out, he could see for miles, the stars turing the world silver.

And it was only then, sitting on the branch high in the sky with his feet dangling off into the darkness, and with Yuuri at his side, a shared blanket wrapped around their shoulder, that Viktor saw that the music was from.

It was almost at tall as the tree on which they sat, and in the dim light, it almost seemed that it was made up of shimmery, almost transparent layers of draped, dark fabric, the material dragging behind it as it glided along the ground like a veil, and above its white face, was a pair of large antlers.

And the more Viktor looked, the more he saw, there was another creature, formed of the same flowing black material that bounded along on four legs and paws, its face as white as the first and a pair of horns that reminded Viktor of a ram’s curling, around long, pointed ears. There was one that looked akin to a giant koi, the flowing material streaming out of its fins and tail like water, another of a bird with massive wings that passed through the tree trunks as if nothing was there. There was one, a lion like creature with stag's’ horns, with a mane that blossomed into the night like a zinnia flower.

Each one had the face of chalky white skulls, their eyes only dark bleeding spots of nothing.

They passed through the trees as if though water, their form only wavering for a second before reappearing once more, the music followed them like a second skin.

Viktor had never felt smaller as he had then, and when one of the creatures passed next to the tree that they were sitting on, a wave of cold followed as it passed like late summer frost.

But when Yuuri opened his mouth and whistled, the noise as sharp as mint in the dark, quiet forest and the same melody as the one that ricocheted around them, the creatures had lifted their white faces, and the music swelled louder in response, swirling around them like tides, and Viktor could only wonder if, maybe, this was what it was like to fall in love with someone.       

 

* * *

 

 

One the first day of the third week, Viktor wakes with his back sore, and with memories of a redhaired girl lingering at the edges of his mind.

He could remember her bright glacier blue eyes and her ringing laughter that had followed her wherever she went, but he could not remember her name and the harder he tried to place it, the more the thought seemed to slip out of grasp like trying to hold onto cold rain droplets, the thought flickering at the edges of his consciousness, but fleeing before he could place it.

He was quiet when Yuuri sat next to him as they ate breakfast in the shadows of the ancient trees, and  when Yuuri had said, “we will see fae today,” Viktor hadn’t questioned it, too lost in the absence of a memory. Yuuri had said something else, about finding pretty things, and Viktor had only nodded as if he heard.

It was when Viktor had stopped, sometime later down the road, and when the sun was high in the sky when he had noticed that Yuuri had stopped several feet behind him on their dirt path, bending over a cluster of small green leaves and dots of red that Viktor could not see, that he remembered something else.

There was a single blossom that he stared at absentmindedly as he waited for Yuuri, its petals so very vibrant and rich, so violet and regal, that it had made him think of the King, because of course the beautiful fire haired woman was connected to the King.

The thought of the king brought for the memory of the scent of dogs and floral perfume, and such a deep dislike that Viktor had to swallow a lump in his throat.

But that was wrong, wasn’t it?

Because everyone knew of the king, but no one _knew_ the king, and it was not as if he had ever sat in the stiff backed chair on the man’s right side, reserved for the king’s favorite helpers, or had met his son.

It doesn’t make sense, as if he was trying to piece together a puzzle with some of the pieces forgotten, and Viktor can’t remember where they are to find them.

The woman’s face comes with the fleeting memory of the golden haired boy who wore his snarl like armor. And if Viktor concentrated enough, he thinks can hear her voice in his mind, but then it shifts to the voice of a younger man, and then to the harsh rasping voice of someone much older, but it’s like trying to sing the tune of a song while another one is playing, because it just gets lost, and when Viktor tries to think, all he can hear is his own voice.

Later, Yuuri asks his why he was quiet, as he tucks a large back iridescent  feather into the side pocket of Viktor pack with a small murmur about it being for later, Viktor can only honestly say, “I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

 

The sun was beginning to bleed onto the horizon, turning the world into rose gold and yellow, and as they break out of final trees, the world seems to unfold open, the plains of wildflowers and tall grass stretching out for leagues and leagues until they could not longer see.

Yuuri had been hinting about the Fae as they traversed the pathway underneath the arching branches, but when they finally placed their packs down on the ground where the grass was shaded by the ancient trees it was still a surprise to be met with several women, their faces as beautiful and ethereal as they were otherworldly.

They were Dyads, Viktor knew, as they melted from the trees like water, the branches and the bark clinging to them like cloaks, and Viktor could not tell where their bodies began and where the trees ended.

They were laughing, leaves budding in their hair and tiny flowers intertwined with their green stained fingers, but their light, falling mirth set Viktor’s teeth on edge and sent shivers down his spine.

One of them steps forward, her face as dark as heartwood, and wearing nothing but a flowing skirt that pooled arounder her ankles, and Viktor knew, without a hesitation, even with her youthful face and delicately placed steps, that she belonged to one of the ancient trees that had been growing for centuries. “Oh travelers, travelers, we have heard about your journey from our sisters who watched you as you walked through our land, and tell us travelers, what can you offer us.”

Viktor starts at her question, but Yuuri holds out his hand in greeting, as if he had expected nothing but this, and when he lowers his head to her, Viktor catches a glimpse of his expression, state blnk and winter cold “I can offer you ripe strawberries.” he says, and when he holds out his hands again, the sweet sweet berries are staining his hands red.

The same fae reached out and took one, her fingernails sinking into the fruit, and when she tastes it, she smiles, the juice pink on her lips, and the rest of the Dryads had followed, each one taking a berry from his outstretched hand until there was nothing left but the colour.  

“I can offer you these glass beads,” Yuuri murmurs, his voice quiet and rabbit soft before them. He reaches back to his pack to grab a bright, scarlet silk bag, one that he had bought on one of the first days in the human kingdom, and pulls on the string, until the top of the bag spills open to reveal dozens of small blue beads, each one the size of flowerbud, shimmering slightly in the fading light.

Yuuri had found the beads several hours before he had bought the bag, a small child crying as the string holding them on her wrist snapping and sending the beads scattering into the dust. Yuuri had only picked them up long after the child had been pulled away by her red faced mother, brushing off the dust and sticking them into his pocket, ignoring Viktor’s question of what he would use them for.

Yuuri must had washed them at some point in the icy river that had followed their path for several days, because inside the red bag, the beads caught the light and flickered like small gemstones.

He sets the bag on the ground in front of the Dryads’ feet, and then, with his voice low and breathy, and almost hesitant, “and I can offer you a dance.”

They seem to consider it, pondering Yuuri’s words and gifts, before one of the younger women steps forward, her body light and poised, trembling aspen leaves woven in a circlet in her pale hair, and her voice as sticky and sweet as maple syrup, “Are you not the _Cymysgryw_ that we heard about from the court? Who danced so beautifully that people said it was what you were only born to do?”

Only Viktor can see Yuuri’s back stiffen slightly, before relaxing again as if it never happened,a curling smile on his lips, “maybe.”

The Dryads seems to like what he offered, running chlorophyll dyed finger through the beads in the silk pouch and licking the sweet ripe strawberry off their fingertips. They laugh again, and one of them moves forward to place a woven flower crown out of the nearby small white blossom, in Yuuri’s dark, dark hair, and kissing his cheek.

Yuuri smiles like he was one of them, and he tilts his head kissing the Dryad who gave him the wreath on the cheek.

They turned to Viktor then, and when the older woman spoke, her voice river smooth, and almost disdainful, he could only swallow, grateful to Yuuri for helping him, and for warning him before they had arrived. “And you, human traveler, what do you bring for us?”

He draws out the feather, dark and shimmery, with colours splashing off the stands like water drops, and presents it outward, bowing slightly as he did so, the position akin to one Viktor had done hundreds of times before. “I can offer you this feather,” He  says, his voice seeming much to raspy and loud for the grove of trees and grass, before moving to place it gently at their feet.

But before he could, one of the women, her fingers stained deep deep evergreen, picked it up out of his hand, and when she looked at it, pausing slightly, she brought the tip of it thoughtfully to her lips in question, and then traced the feather along Viktor’s throat, as light as a breath, and it was all he could do to not gasp.

They look at him expectantly again, the feather disappearing with the fae who picked it from his hands, and Viktor drew out a small white stone that he had found on the road earlier this week, faint grey and speckled.

Once more, he offered it out to the Dryads in his outstretched palms. And once more they took it.

He felt unsettled. He felt as if he had been a situation akin to this before, but now, he felt...lost, uncertain of what to do

Viktor hesitates. Earlier when the sun was sinking lower and lower into the blushed sky, as Viktor took step after step on the dirt paved road, and the feather tickling his side with every movement, Yuuri had come to stand next to him, “they will ask for three things, two physical things, and one… I’m not sure, how to say, maybe more of something that they can’t touch.” He fidgeted with the straps of his pack before continuing, his voice quiet beneath the towering trees, and when he suggested what Viktor could offer, Viktor had agreed.

But now, with so quiet of the empty spaces where they were waiting for him to talk, Viktor’s voice seems to shake, “I can offer you a story.”

The Dryads seem to like the offer, because one of them smiled, her voice as crackly as the bark that curled on some of the surrounding trees, and asks, “what sort of story?”

Viktor smiled like he was still at the court, his face as blank and expressionless as a forest on the first snowfall, “one about heartbreak.”

And when he told them his story, the one he had suggested to Yuuri, and the same one that Viktor had gotten drunk on whiskey to, after meeting Yuuri, when someone had brought it up to him with a wolf’s smile.  It was a story about a man, and the fae woman he feel in love with, and how he chased he until she gave in, and then how he discarded her like a worn-out object, no longer worth his interest, and all the while he told it, he tried not to think about how much it reminded him of Yuuri.

When he finishes, the Dryad who had spoken to them first, her skin dark and rich as the earth by her feet, claps her hands together lightly, Viktor feels like he could finally breath again, but he still felt, with every mouthful of air, that he was still waiting

Music blossoms out of nowhere, into the air like magenta and ultramarine swirls, and it was as if the sound pulled the other, lingering fae out of the forest. A woman too small to be a human and face too fine adorned with golden feather appeared, partially hidden behind a tree, and a man with a furry chest and goat hooves clattered out into the night, followed by a rusalka, her hair pooling like liquid gold.

The main Dryad twists, her long skirt flowing around her like a dream, and when she laughed again, pulling in all the other voices of the fae in her mirth, as if they had passed some unknown test, she spreads out her arms, and says, “Come now travelers, we have much to celebrate before the night grows old and worn!”

Her movements calls forth the others, and the rest of the Dryads danced into the center of the clearing, their pattering footsteps raising small plumes of dust. Viktor watches one of them, her face mottled with white, kiss the Dryad with dark green fingers on the corner of her mouth, and in that moment, he does not notice the the approaching figure of the aspen girl who had asked Yuuri, with an innocent cruelty on her face, is he was a _Cymysgryw_.

She smiled at him with the face of a young girl, outstretches her hand, her fingers blushed pink from the stain of the ripe strawberry, and asks, “Dance with me?”

It is not a question, and he sees Yuuri accept a similar offer out of the corner of his eye. Viktor smiles at the girl, and takes her hand.

The music is quick and lively, bouncing along with snow smoothed stones, an undercurrent of a heavier thrum, and the aspen girl twirls out of his arms with every other step they took, and with every swell of the music.

It was half moments later, when she turns to look Viktor in the face, her back pressed against his chest, that she seems to grow taller, and when he meets her gaze, he can understand how this could be the same fae who had reduced Yuuri to nothing with a single word. “It would be such a shame,” she whispers against his neck, her voice eerie and as hollow as wind, “to lose what you didn’t have, wouldn’t it?

Viktor doesn’t understand until she looks at Yuuri, her face like a snake, and the anger that raises in his throat is thick and suffocating, until he could not breath, was hot enough to burn. He wanted to hiss, to lash out and to hold her pale, delicate wrists until he was certain she would not touch Yuuri, but the music changed partners at the moment, and she smiled over her shoulder, smug and full of teeth, as she spun out of his grasp.

Viktor’s next partner was the fae who lead the clustering of Dryads, towering over Viktor with her bare chest and long long legs, and Viktor could only swallow as he twirls he out, and wait for what she would say.

She is quiet for most of the dance, until she looks down at him with green, unreadable eyes, and says, “There are many travelers who seek the queen's favor, and many more who flock from the human kingdom like birds, but it is unusual for kin to travel so separately  to the same place.”

Viktor can only stare at her, his confusion painted on his face like a mask, and thinks about the seven scales on the shadow of the fish that on his chest, and about how he had been thinking about someone today, but could not grasp who, and how so so afraid he was, because it would be such a terrible thing to forget a family member, and Viktor would not know if he had.

He can only tilt his head politely, brushing it off as if it was only Yuuri and him who traveled the dirt path to the Seelie court, “I don’t have any kin though.”

The Dryad smiles down at him with white white teeth and a smile made for a wolf, “perhaps,” she says, with all the assured confidence of someone who knew they were not wrong, “I was mistaken.”

It was after she swirled away to her next dance, her skirt rippling away, and Viktor had stepped out of the circle to be able to catch his breath, did he think that he hates this, as they toyed with Yuuri and him with sharp cat’s claws, while they could do nothing but smile.

Viktor dances until his feet hurt, and the two moons, one silver and one as dull as a shadow, rose higher in the sky, while Yuuri swirled amount their forms, so like falling leaves, as if he belonged to them his body carrying the same stupidly enthralling grace. Someone had offered him a crystal cup earlier, the contents as dark as a mulberry and as rich as blood, and even though he had only swallowed a singular mouthful of the bitter floral liquid, his head pounded as if he has drank a whole bottle.

The stars were littering the sky when the music seems to stop, fading into the night like nothing, and the fae turn to look at the same Dryad once more, her giggle loud in the night, “oh traveler, traveler, the night is growing weary, and you have danced with us, and oh traveler, traveler, what do you wish for on this journey of yours?”

There was something cruel about her asking, her cheeks flushed pink from the glass she clutched in her long fingers, but Yuuri laughed like he knew their ways, as if he had expected this, and when he extended one arm out, with his hair falling in front of his flushed cheeks, he says, “I wish us safe travels on this road ahead.”

They turned to look at Viktor then, and he didn't know what to say, because he wanted to wish to remember what he had already forget, to wish away the _damned_ tattoo on his chest. He wanted to wish to understand what the Dryad had meant earlier about kin. And maybe more than anything, he wanted to wish away what the apen girl had said, to wish to disprove what she had hissed about things he could not have, and he wanted to wish for Yuuri.

But he could not say this, and so when he spoke, his voice seeming much too loud and booming, rough and scratchy and as if it didn’t belong to him, “I wish that the wildflowers will be blooming along our path as we travel.”

She looked at him as if with pity, as if she could sense what he did not say and did not ask for, but only smiled once more, and lifted her arms, and said to the moons, “And only the skies knows if you will get your wishes.”

 

* * *

 

 

Viktor’s head is pounding when he wakes in an unfamiliar clearing.

Yuuri is sitting up next to him, his back leaning against a tree and face tilted towards the grey sky.

Besides them, their packs lay in the dirt, the top sprayed open in the exact manner that it was when they were in the wild meadow with the Dryads. But the clearing now has less trees, and tall grass surrounds them instead of the dark compacted soil that they had danced on last night.

Viktor turns to study Yuuri, who hasn’t looked at him since he awoke, and when he asks, “where are we?” his voice is rough in his throat.

“I'm not sure,” Yuuri murmurs, “Maybe about a mile away from their clearing. They never let travelers stay the night.”

And it's only when Yuuri says it, still looking to the softly billowing storm clouds, that Viktor truly begins to understand the Dryads, and also begin to notice the deep sadness that clings to Yuuri like a morning shroud. “How did we get here…? Did we walk?”

“I don’t think so. I’m guessing we feel asleep and they carried us here.”

There is something fundamentally _wrong_ about that image, of being helpless with the Dryads surrounding them, and even more so, for the fear that the aspen fae could have touched Viktor without him knowing, or even worse, that she might have laid her hands on Yuuri.

“We have to find water,” Yuuri says quietly, and it's only then that Yuuri turns to look at him, his eyes seeming to be rimmed with pink, “and the road again. But, water first.”

Viktor wonders if he had done something last night, in the blank spaces between when the Dryads had asked for his wish and when he woke, with his heading pounding as if he has swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the bitter tasting alcohol, or if Yuuri had somehow seen or understood what he had wanted to say, to shout, at the circle of Fae last night, but had been too cowardly to speak.

“I’ll go find water,” He can only say rapidly, already stuffing his bruised and sore feet back into his boots, ignoring Yuuri weak forms of protest to escape the stifling air, crashing through the golden grass to follow the quiet sound of running water in the distance.

 

* * *

 

 

It doesn’t take Viktor long to find the source of the sound, a crystal clear steam hidden within the grass and sparse trees, and when he dips the tips of his fingers into it, it is cold enough to make him gasp.

He moves to fill the pot with water, and then stops, placing it down on the small dirt strip that bordered the creek.

There is something pitiful about it, as he sets it down, and then presses his forehead to the smooth bark of the nearby tree.

He hates himself in that small moment, with the way he left Yuuri when the unknowable grief clung to him like a spell, and with the way that Yuuri held back from him, as if he had said something the past night, with the alcohol making his mouth heavy with words he can’t remember.

He hates himself, because he is so so afraid of forgetting, but everything keeps slipping out of his grasp, chasing the pieces like will-o-the-wisps until  they leave him drowning and with nothing but darkness and people with lost names and half shadowed faces.

Viktor presses his face into the bark, his tightly tensed fingers leaving dark crescents of green behind, and when his twists, turning instead to have his hunched back again the tree and sliding down until he is slumped over, the sound that comes out of his mouth is guttural and raw.

There is the lump in his throat as if he wants to start crying, and Viktor doesn’t understand why.

Instead, he curls his back and brings his knees to his chest, his hands grasping at his face and his eyelids, as if maybe, if he can swallow and ignore the tightness of his strung out emotions, maybe he won't feel like crying anymore.

He wonders if fae cry, as he pulls his body into himself, and the thought is cruel in some ways, alienating and making him feel so very small, but as he tries to stifle the sob with his hand, the image of his mother on his mind and the scent of blueberries with every breath, he catches a glimpse of something.

It is a bird wing, the feathers splayed and the bones twisted away from the body, and the very _wrongness_ of it is enough to make him stop in some ways, enough to push aside the guilt at leaving Yuuri with so little explanation, and he can't stop looking at it.

The feather were once a greyish blue, but death had dulled them even more, until they were almost colourless, and when Viktor peered closer, he thought he saw brown crusted droplets of dried blood clinging to the down.

It was in the water, the one wing that Viktor saw raised above the surface like a morbid map, and Viktor keeps looking at it, even as he tears his gaze away, something deep and intrinsic drawing him back to stare at the way that the bird’s tightly closed beak was still a yellow so golden it almost glimmered, and the way that it's one open eye was so so _so_ very dark.

He didn’t realize that he had moved until he kicked the metal pot that was littered along the dirt of the stream, and Viktor paused, because it seemed familiar in some ways, a warning for something he didn’t understand, but he wants to touch the bird, he wants to take its tiny form out of the water, and it seemed to keep pulling him closer and closer.

The body was lodged between two smooth stones, the second one keeping it in place and from being carried downstream with the current, and as Viktor reaches out, something stops him, because that was odd wasn’t it, to want to touch a dead bird, but when he looks again, it was if he hadn’t noticed how blue the feathers were on the wings, how yellow the slightly parted beak was, and the bright red spots almost looked like rubies on the wings and the chest.

‘ _Pick it up_ ,’ something seems to whisper, but Viktor didn't pause, because even though the voice was low, far shades deeper than his own, he could only agree, because that was he was doing, that was what he had to be doing, and the voice only seemed to urge him on.

It was when he brushed the tip of one of his fingers on the tallest feather, that Viktor knew he had made the right choice, because the feeling that followed felt like liquid ecstasy and pure silver, his blood soared, and whatever it was that had been bothering him ages ago no longer mattered, and he could only focus on how soft the bird was, and how much softer the chest would be, and he only had to touch it.

Viktor’s vision went white when he picked up the bird, water droplets clinging to the jewel like feathers, but he could only think that he blinked, because the feeling of holding the tiny, tiny body in his hands was everything he had ever wanted and all that he ever needed.

The bird’s beak was open, and Viktor can only think about how cruel that seemed, for it to die with it open, its small, fragile, snapped neck lulling to the side with each shuffle Viktor took to take it away from the water. But maybe it had only been nearby the water, because the feathers no longer seemed wet, and the tiny body seems almost warm.

He blinks again, and the world was as white and featherless as the first snowfall of winter, and when he looks up again, once more able to see, the sun, seeming so much pale than the bird’s beak, was higher, hidden partly behind the sky.

He blinks, and shadows seemed to creep in a circle around him, reflecting off leaves, and somewhere in the grass, he thinks he sees a glimpse of a metal container, but he blinks and he doesn’t see it again.

Far away, someone calls “Viktor?” into the building wind and into the storm clouds, and Viktor could only feel sorry for them, to have lost whoever they were looking for, and to be out in the cold while he had all the warmth of the bird to himself.

He distinctly wonders if he could share the warmth, but something, in a low voice, tells him, that it would be a bad idea, and Viktor would only be _cold_.

“Viktor?” Someone calls again, louder and closer, and Viktor didn’t understand why the voice was approaching him, because _he_ was there, and not the Viktor that the voice was looking for.

He hears something metallic, and hollow and carrying, as if someone had kicked a metal object as they were walking, but as the person got closer, they sounded as if they were getting farther and farther away.

“Viktor,” The man says, his voice quieter and almost melancholy, he suddenly appears before Viktor, on the opposite side of the stream, his hair as dark as the quickly approaching twilight, and holding what seems to be a metal cooking pot, dirt scuffing the sides and Viktor doesn’t understand how he had gotten there.

“Yuuri” He says, and it seems wrong, because the man starts at the name but Viktor doesn't know what he is saying, the word meaningless to him, stretching out the vowels as he says it, as if for the first time before it vanishes from his mind once more.

“Viktor,” the man says once more, his face so infinitely sad, and there is something breathtakingly beautiful about him, but Viktor doesn’t notice, and in his hands, the bird seems to twitch slightly, when he looks down at it, its eyes are closed.

He wants the man to leave, to let it just be him and bird again. The way it should be.

But there is something warm pressed against his mouth, soft, and Viktor’s eyes slide shut, because the sensation is right in some ways that he can't articulate with words, and when Yuuri pulls away, Viktor feels cold in a whole new way that bird cannot chase away.

“Yuuri,” He says, and he knows what it means because it is the beautiful dark haired creature who stood before him who had just kissed him. “ _Yuuri_.”

He leans forwards, wanting to chase the warmth that Yuuri had carried, but Yuuri pulls back, and it feels like shards of glass, because Yuuri had just _kissed him_ , and then he is shifting away, and it _hurts_.

But Yuuri is moving, and Viktor doesn’t understand, because one moment Yuuri is wearing the dark blue tunic and the next he is not, and then there is something _missing_ from Viktor’s hands, the warmth of a falling star torn away from him, the bird making a shrill, high pitched, piercing noise when Yuuri grabs it, his hand wrapped in his tunic and the scent of mint cloying in the air.

The smell of mint grows stronger, almost overpowering and bitter, Viktor blinks, glances away, and there is a snap, and it's as if he can breath again, and everything comes back to him in a flood.

Yuuri is holding the bird, its neck truly snapped, and as both of them watch, the bright colours seem to bleed away into nothing and the true bird turns sallow and grey, its wings tucked to its sides and its feets curled up by its body, its eyes truly closed, and when Yuuri blows a mint tainted breath at it, it crumbles to old age and dirt in the shirt which held it.

Viktor comes back to him self with the crushing grasp of exhaustion clinging to his bones, he recognizes Yuuri, and the copper water pot that he is holding in one hand. Yuuri had kissed him, Viktor thinks, but he can’t think right now.

Instead, he opens his arms, _pleads_ , “Yuuri.”

Yuuri goes to him without hesitating, dropping both the metal pot and the tunic to the dirt to clutch at Viktor’s back, and bury his face in his shoulder.

“I was searching for hours,” Yuuri says, his voice scared and muffled and it's as if an illusion had shattered, because he was still the same confident person that had snapped the bird’s neck, but there was was genuine fear mixed in, and Viktor thought that Yuuri might be crying. “I kept going around in circles, and I couldn’t tell. I thought I lost you.”

“I’m sorry,” Viktor murmurs, his face pressed into Yuuri’s hair like a lifeline, and he feels like crying again, but it's different from before, because he is so so stupidly, profoundly _relieved_ and grateful for Yuuri for finding him, for taking the damned creature that he had held close away from him, as it faded to dust that he doesn’t think he knows how to put that into words.

 

* * *

 

 

Viktor only talks after they have made it back to their makeshift camp, after they have eaten dinner and when he is wrapped in both of their blankets and huddled in front of the low flickering fire, his lips still slightly blue.

He had lost a whole day to the bird.

Yuuri sits opposite him, his fingers curled and leaving pink crescent moons in his palms. There is a silence between them, holding a tension that is unusual to both of them. Viktor was silent, and when he brings his fingers up to his lips, and when he pulls them away, he looks lost.

He had lost and whole day to the bird, and yet, he had gained something else, something intangible and priceless.

“You kissed me,” he says, and it's not a question, but it's not a statement either, the words carrying both a wonderment and a sorrow, “Why?”

It's not a true question, and it's not one Viktor wants an answer for.

Yuuri stares at him and there are a hundred things he wants to say - that it was the easiest way to the break the bird’s spell, that it was so he could catch Viktor’s attention. But there are much more personal reasons - that he was so so afraid of losing Viktor to the lovebird’s curse, and how Yuuri didn’t want him to slip away before he got the chance to understood him, before he felt like he truly, truly knew him.  He had wanted to know Viktor for ages, ever since the moment they had started this half forged dance, edging the line between friends and something else.

But instead, he looks at Viktor, and then back at the ground, before flicking his eyes back to the beautiful silver haired man, and says, “Viktor.”

He kisses him then, leaning forward to press his lips to Viktor’s, slightly hesitant and slightly afraid and still so very _wanting_.

Viktor opens his eyes, and when he looks at Yuuri, there is something delighted, as he lifts a hand to cup the back of Yuuri’s head to pull them even impossibly closer, and when he murmurs, “ _Yuuri_ ,” his voice low and muted and breathy, he says the name like he knows what it means and all the memories it carries.

And when Yuuri pulls back for the second time that day, Viktor follows, chasing his lips to place one more long, unhurried kiss on Yuuri’s mouth, tender and somehow something that wouldn’t be out place between lovers, who had traced the path of their bodies for years. He breaths out, his nose almost brushing with Yuuri’s when he pulls away slightly, his voice husky, “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

It hurts somehow when Viktor says that, a small stupid twinge, because Viktor doesn’t have _long times_ to wait, and Yuuri is so stupidly desperate of break Orphia’s curse, and so painfully tangled up in his own jumbled emotions of want, and fear, and friendship with Viktor, that seems slightly more sometimes, that he doesn’t want to take away from Viktor’s time left. He doesn't want Viktor to see his confusing feelings that he had been trying to hide, and in some ways, he doesn't want to taint Viktor’s time with his own problems.

But Yuuri doesn’t say this, instead he pressed his face into the crook of Victor's shoulder, and murmurs that same, and tries not to think of all the things they could lose.

 

* * *

 

 

In the morning, their backs pressed against each other as they had slept, the road forks, the right side overgrowth, and the left covered with tracks of a creatures that neither of them knew.

“This is wrong,” Yuuri says, and there is something fearful in his voice. “There is not supposed to be a split here. There is only one road.”

Viktor stands before him. He wants to touch Yuuri, to comfort him, but he is uncertain of where they stand, even now, “It has to be the left, then. Maybe a new road was made.”

“No,” Yuuri snaps, looking at the roads with a wild gleam in his eyes. “That never happens, it would have been on the map. It wasn’t on the map. One of the roads doesn’t exist.”

Viktor starts, “what do you mean?”

“One of them is a trap. I think it's the right. It has to be the right. It's always the right.”

Viktor nods, and when they step down the road on the right, the left hisses into nothing, leaving behind only a faint dusting of grey ash.

 

* * *

 

 

The second week of June dawns on the Fae kingdom in an abundance of flower blossoms, filling their path with a light, dancing, floral scent and with an endless riot of the brightest of colours, each bloom a small perfection.

They were beautiful, and yet, in some ways, Yuuri could only be uneasy, because even if nothing had happened since Viktor had fallen to the curse of the dead bird, everything seemed to be holding its breath. And maybe that was the problem, because June normally made the Fae kingdom come alive, creatures waking from underneath the surface of the burbling rivers, tiny girl-like beings wearing flower petals as dresses emerging from under leaves, and feather fae who flew along the line of the sky and land that cast no shadows, made their journey to the court for what was the biggest celebration of the year as the Seelie Court danced to the peak of their power on the longest day of summer.

But instead, as Viktor and Yuuri traveled along their winding path, they had encountered almost nothing, only the two white ravens that sometimes followed them as they walked, croaking things that were in a language that neither Viktor nor Yuuri understood, and the man with the legs of a frog and webbed hands who had joined them for their dinner one evening, not speaking a word, and leaving only after his bowl had been licked clean.

Maybe this was normal, Yuuri thought, because he had never done this before, making his own journey from the darker, farther side of the kingdom to the court, and traveling with a human companion by his side.

He could only swallowed, and _hope_ , and keep walking.   

 

* * *

 

 

There is something restless and humming in the air that wakes Viktor several days before they were destined to arrive at the court.

There was the image of man in his mind, and Viktor knows that he was important, but it's like trying to hold onto the details of a dream after waking up, the specific feature of his face slipping away until he is only left with the man’s mischievous hazel eyes and scraggly chin.

Yuuri is still asleep beside him, his back pressed against Viktor,  his hair splayed on the ground, and his magic, warm and smelling of mint, surrounding them in a circle of protection as they slept.

Viktors turns, rolling onto his shoulder and pressing his face to Yuuri’s back, when a flower catches his attention. It small, almost hidden in the grass in which it grows, and there are dozens of tiny, perfect bell shaped blossoms lining up the stalks in a brilliant shade of fading pink and fusion.

When Viktor brings his finger to touch the blossoms, the sound of tinkling glass follows, and he can only stare at them in awe, and wonder if he had ever seen them before.

And maybe, he thinks, as he sits up slowly, to not disturbed Yuuri, maybe that this was the only good part of the curse Orphia gave him. Because he would never know if he had ever glanced at their beautiful shape before as he walked along the road, the memory of them fleeting as soon as it left his sight, and each time he saw them, he would still be able to have the same sense of wonderment as if seeing them for the first time because he could never know.

But as he drew his knees to his chest and presses a hand over his mouth, there would never ever be anything that would outweigh the cruelty of losing everything he cared about until he could no longer remember that he had forgotten. He could no longer remember what he had done before he met Yuuri, the details slipping out of his fingers like the faces he had forgotten, only able to cling onto the face of his companion and a silver haired woman with a dancing smile.

And maybe, in some ways, that was the cruelest part, to know that he was forgetting everything and to not know what he was losing, and to not be able to stop it, until he was only left with an echo of what he once was.

‘ _My name is Viktor Nikiforov,’_ he want to say, ‘ _My name is Viktor Nikiforov,’_ he wants to scream out into the inky darkness until he can no longer hear his own voice, ‘ _My name is Viktor Nikiforov, and I am losing myself’_

 

* * *

 

 

Viktor find the paper stained with ink droplets that look like tears one morning, when the sun is barely starting to filter through the grass.

The name _‘Irina’_ stares back at him in slanted, loopy handwriting, and when he brings the paper to his nose, forming each letter with his mouth and his fingernails digging bruises into his thighs, he is disappointed.

Somehow he had expected it to smell like his mother, like wild blueberries and a deep earthy scent, but instead, it only smells like paper and leather from being inside of his pack.

It hurts, a small, primal pain, similar to the sharp slice of hammered metal and salt, and Viktor folds the paper in half, tucking it safely back inside his bag, all while repeating the name over and over in his head with every breath he took.

 

* * *

 

Something dark had grown and flourished inside of Viktor the closer they had traveled to the court, they the summer days growing longer and longer.

In some ways, he was apprehensive from the summer solstice to arrive, equal parts fear and equal parts relief.

And in some ways, with the dark stain of dread sinking its long, sharp claws into his throat with every breath he took, he didn’t want to reach the court, because it seemed as if reaching it would make the curse so much more _real_.

Because, when he was traveling, with Yuuri at his side and with the fragrance of mint following them both like a shadow, he could ignore it, the fading faces seeming less monumental, and if he could fight it, then maybe it would not be all that bad.

But it would not be the same when he would reach the court, and Viktor was so very afraid.

And the smaller reasons, that he only let himself think when he could not sleep and only the two moons were there to keep bay his loneliness, was that he didn’t his time with Yuuri to end, to lose what had only started to blossom between them.

And even more than anything, if he swallowed and was able to admit it, was that he was afraid of forgetting Yuuri’s face, the sound of his voice and his laugh, the colour and softness of his hair, for the way that with the sunlight his eyes sometimes seem golden, for it all to fade away until Yuuri was nothing more than a stranger with a broken heart for what could have been.

And by the time that they had stopped for the night, spreading out their blankets by a wild growing thicket of blackberry bushes, less than a week before the solstice, he felt as if he could no longer remember how to breathe.

Yuuri had started the fire with sparks and leaving behind the faintest smell of mint, the long nights still biting cold, even in the start of summer, taken the scuffed metal cooking pot from his bag and starting their supper, when Viktor called his name.

Something in his voice made Yuuri turn to look at him, worry poorly hidden in the creases of his eyes and the way he bit his lip, his fear for what both of them refused to say written on his features, and Viktor could only remember how Yuuri had looked when he had called his name without knowing what it meant when he had held the jewel like bird in his hands.

“Yuuri,” He says again, and he wants to open his mouth and say everything that had been pounding around his head like a stone, to spill forth his fears with the fire casting dancing shadows on both of their faces, but he doesn't know how to, the fear of Yuuri leaving if he told him seeming so encompassing. And instead, when he finally meets Yuuri’s concerned gaze, he can only says, “Please, Yuuri, I’m so so afraid.”

But Yuuri does not turn him away, casting him aside as he knew he would not, but pulls Viktor towards him, and when he hugs him, he is so so warm, and Viktor hadn’t known he was cold.

“I…” Viktor had started, before trailing off, resting his head on Yuuri’s collarbone, the steady tattoo of the fae’s heartbeat as fast as a rabbit under his skin, “I am…” He hadn’t know how to finish, bringing his hands in front of his face, as if that could tell him how to speak the words that stuck like honey to his mouth.

He wanted to know feel again, the need powerful, and almost instinctive, rising up within him, to somehow prove to himself that he was _real_ , that he still was whole even if he didn’t feel it.

“Yuuri,” he murmurs for the third time in the past moments, “I want to forget, I want to feel real again.”

And when he had kissed Yuuri, with his hand on the inside of Yuuri’s thigh, and when Yuuri had kissed him back, an echo of the first kisses they had shared, months ago in a grungy tavern and under the glamor of an illusion, it had been enough to chase away the demons inside his head for a moment.

* * *

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are both [the first](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com/post/166795737735/wild-mint-blossoms-chapter-one-rhosyn-gwyllt) and [the second](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com/post/167433020230/wild-mint-blossoms-chapter-one-fioled) chapter announcement posts on tumblr. If you want to reblog either of them, that would be lovely!
> 
> These are the Welsh words used in the story so far, in order of appearance. Once again, I do not speak Welsh, so please don't hesitate to correct any mistakes! 
> 
> \- **Ceiswyr:** Seeker  
>  \- **Ceiswyr o bethau anghofiedig:** Seeker of forgotten things  
>  \- **Dawnsio:** Dancing (or just dance in general)  
>  \- **Cymysgryw:** The literal translation of this is heterogeneous, however, within mint, it is only really used at 'hybrid', or as both Yuuri and Viktor define it, as 'halfling'  
>  \- **fioled drilliw:** Pansy (literally translates to 'violet in colour')  
>  \- **rhosyn gwyllt:** Wild rose
> 
> There are also symbolic meanings of the chapter titles!  
> \- **Wild Rose:** passion, love, beauty and secrecy  
>  \- **Pansy:** thought, love, problems of the heart (If one wanted their sweethearts affection they were supposed to carry a pansy)
> 
> As always, if you liked the story, kudos and comments are worth their weight in gold and I cry happy, grateful tears whenever anyone leaves one!
> 
> Also come yell at me on [tumblr](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com), if you are about the life! I can tell you about random worldbuilding snippets and some of the funny comments that my pal left on the story doc! It will be good!
> 
> The last, and longest, chapter will be posted sometime in the future, probably in a couple weeks! It might not be up until December, but I will try to post it as soon as possible!!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!!


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